


Ring-bound

by AdmirableMonster (Mertiya), Mertiya, Zomburai



Series: Ring-bound verse [2]
Category: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Behind the Scenes, Bilbo and Mairon are the weird buddy cop team I didn't know I needed, Confinement, Dissociation, Friendship, Gaslighting, Grief/Mourning, Honestly a lot of this is about Mairon working through his issues, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mairon and Sam also have way more in common than I was expecting, Mairon versus himself, Master/Servant, Mostly fits into canon if you read things right, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption, The rape is in part 1 chapter 1 and it's skippable but I wanted to warn for it anyway, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:22:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 28
Words: 38,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25158442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/AdmirableMonster, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zomburai/pseuds/Zomburai
Summary: "In the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged in secret a master Ring, to control all others. And into this Ring he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life." But he did not realize the price he would pay for making that Ring.  He did not realize how much of himself he would bind to it, leaving only the Shadow outside.Or, in which Mairon is the Ring, and he isn't trying to get back to the Dark Lord Sauron at all.
Relationships: Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon, heavily implied Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Series: Ring-bound verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848271
Comments: 300
Kudos: 398





	1. Cover and Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been eating at me for months and I finally stitched it together with hopes and prayers and some superglue.
> 
> Thanks to dulaku and vez especially for geeking out over the Silmarillion with me.
> 
> Cover art by Zomburai!

Fire blazed around him. The volcano roared in his ears and quieted the answering roar in his heart. He was never so at home as when he was surrounded by the forge, where he could forget whatever ailed him and lose himself in his creations. Thus had he forged weapons and armor for his master in days long ago. Thus, even longer ago, had he forged the first gleaming iron to be found in Eä. Now he returned here once again, even amidst the torment and pain of the loss of all his hope.

For his lord was gone, cast out, lost to the Void, never more to be seen in Arda until the end of all time. Lava spat and seethed in time with the constriction of his heart. It had all been for naught, in the end. He had forged himself into something new, cast himself into a crueler shape and beaten at the edges until they were what his master willed, until he could perform the cruelest deeds in the name of his love, but never since the Silmarils had touched his hand had his master regarded him with the tenderness of yore but once only. And now there was no chance of it ever again.

He tended the forge. He poured metal into the rough circular crucible, casting it before forging the smoothness of it. It looked like gold, shining crimson in the light of the lava, but it was not gold, for he did not will it so. He willed it to have the beauty with which he had begun and the hardness he had forged into himself later, metal tempered by the cruelty of the Valar into the perfect weapon. This was to be his greatest creation, and with it he would gain dominion over all creatures.

And—it would be more beautiful than the Silmarils. With its power he would rend creation asunder to find his master, and with its _beauty_ —with its beauty, his master would return to him. He smoothed and shaped the sides, and then he called on all his power, and he began to etch the inscription, to bind and anchor the spell. With the tip of his finger he etched it, blood welling from it as he forced more and more of himself out and into it, to bind, to control, to constrict. And with all that power, eventually to unbind in turn.

_I am fire. I am flame. I am beauty. I was his precious, and I will be again._

He stared into the curved perfection of the heated metal surface, and the two blazing eyes of a Maia gazed back.


	2. Part One, Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon remembers and then spirals downwards. He seems to be sabotaging himself....quite literally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter with the rape (and the dissociation). It's not super explicit but it is unpleasant so if you want to skip it I recommend stopping reading at "Sometime in his unconsciousness, he had surrendered" and start again three paragraphs later at "Mairon floated."

_When it begins, Mairon is, predictably, at his forge. Less predictably, rather than working on the intricate details of the network of light-bearing channels he proposed to Aulë, he is staring down at the thin silvery threads and trying to tell himself the moisture sizzling on them is something other than tears—sweat, perhaps. He hears the door open and hastily presses a hand to his face to wipe off any moisture. If it’s Aulë again he certainly can’t show what he has or hasn’t been feeling._

_It isn’t Aulë. The dark-haired figure in the door radiates an aura of majesty marking him as a Vala, but he is not one whose physical form Mairon has ever seen before, tall and beautiful with blue eyes like chips of frozen ice and hair as dark as a raven’s wing. He enters, frowning, and stares about the forge as if he’s searching for something. His gaze sweeps over Mairon and pauses. “I wasn’t expecting to find someone working so late.”_

_“I was just cleaning up,” Mairon offers. “I’m sorry, my lord…?”_

_“Melkor,” is the response, with a slow, thin smile. “But there’s no call to apologize. It’s your forge.”_

_“It’s Lord Aulë’s,” Mairon retorts tartly. “I am just Mairon. A Maia.”_

_“Well, Mairon, if it is not your forge then whose exceedingly fine creation is that?”_

_Mairon follows his pointing finger to the fine mesh before him and feels himself flush hot, feels a pain rise in his throat to choke him. “It’s to be destroyed,” he says bluntly. “I have overstepped my bounds by attempting the creation of something to interface with the lamps.”_

_Thinking back, Mairon wonders if this is the moment it begins, or if it began when the door swung open for the first time. Melkor sucks in a short, horrified little breath and crosses to him. “They would make you destroy your own creation?”_

_“Lord Aulë’s will,” Mairon responds, and he tries—oh, how he tries—to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Which makes it the will of Eru Ilúvatar.”_

_Melkor looks at him seriously, and he slides an unerring thumb across Mairon’s cheek, where one treacherous tear-drop remains, having evaded all attempts to brush it off. “A crime,” he says, with simple, honest anger, as he rubs away the tear himself. A thrill of something utterly alien sweeps through Mairon, his entire being suddenly concentrated on that one cool point of contact._

~

As time spun on and one day flowed like water into the next, Mairon discovered something troubling. He was losing moments. He would glance down and gaze into the golden sheen of the ring on his finger and the next moment, he would be in the middle of an order to the balrogs, or standing at the precipice of Barad-dûr and looking down at the smoke and ash of his kingdom. He could not understand it; at first he thought he was merely losing himself in daydreams of happier times, but that could hardly explain the way he seemed to be continuing about his daily chores even when his mind was wholly absent. And then, as he slowly tightened his grasp on the Seven rings and began to consider how best to distribute the Nine, something unexpected and potentially displeasing occurred: a Man of Númenor beat on his door and demanded his subjugation.

Ar-Pharazôn’s army would not be a simple matter to dissuade, and although the obvious course of action was to pretend submission and use the opportunity to wreak havoc, Mairon found himself strangely unwilling to take such a step. He bargained for time; he made excuses; he considered, stupid as it might be, actually fighting back, though his own army was no match for the might of Númenor, not yet.

And then one morning he awoke to find the sun had climbed high and golden into the sky and that he was no longer in his fortress but bumping along on the back of a Númenorean horse. Sometime in his unconsciousness, he had surrendered.

He began to slip away more and more often after arriving in Númenor, as if somehow he weren’t completely joined to his body. It was worst at night, when Ar-Pharazôn took him to him to his bed. Mairon found himself looking down at their coupling as if from a distance: red gold hair spread across the pillow, his head turned to the side as Ar-Pharazôn fucked him. It inspired a certain distant disgust, although from his strange, floating position, he couldn’t feel any of it.

His body was almost unmoving, legs tilted up over the Man’s shoulders. It was so different from his memories from before. He remembered just flashes of vision, red hair mingling with black, a hand covering his, a breathy voice murmuring in his ear, _you’re doing so well, Little Flame_. Pain there had been—yes, but none of it anything he hadn’t wanted. It had been a dark, delicious pain, rooting and anchoring him to the moment, unlike this strange, disconnected numbness.

There was a flush growing on Ar-Pharazôn’s neck, he noticed, but he himself stared continued to stare to the side as the Man tightened and writhed through his climax; the only motion he made was right as the Númenorean went to rise, and then he looked up at himself and grinned a wide and ghastly grin.

Mairon floated. The parts of his day he remembered he spent at the temple, organizing worship, organized sacrifices, prostrating himself in front of the altar. It remained silent, empty. As his despair and loneliness grew, he lost more time: sharp grief overcame any desire for revenge. He would still wake, blinking, to find himself halfway through a conversation with Ar-Pharazôn looking at him oddly. Once, the king took his chin in his hand and jerked him forward, staring down at him with an ugly look. “Thine eyes,” he said. “From whence come these flames?” In anger and disgust, Mairon jerked away so hard that the disconnection descended again immediately.

When the destruction of Númenor came about at last, Mairon was before the altar. Not praying, nor sacrificing, simply curled up beneath it, staring up at the dark stone above him and trying to remember the touch of Melkor’s hands in his hair. It was so difficult to keep moving. He wondered now why he was, wondered if perhaps he might offer himself on the great dark altar. If he did so, would he find himself in the Void? Would he feel the touch of Melkor’s hands once again upon whatever sliver of himself endured? Or would he only snuff himself out and wake in the Halls of Mandos, still sundered, still bereft and now at the mercy of those who had so thoroughly destroyed his love?

He was unprepared for the violence of the Valar’s assault and could only stagger to stiff legs as the earth began to shake beneath him, could only laugh wildly as the choice was ripped from his hands.

When next he woke, he understood at last what had befallen him. No longer having the form he had taken in Númenor, he found himself conscious of where it was he had been fading to all these years, as he lost himself in memories and dreams. This realm was golden, infinite yet strictly bounded: for it was his Ring, the One Ring, that he had forged himself and put into it the better part of himself. And now he could not leave.

Still he could not rest, though, for the creature that had laughed at his rape had at last come into its own. It was a dark and formless shadow, and it did not possess his powers, but it possessed his Ring and through that essentially all of himself. He could no more see into its mind than he could before, but its intentions seemed clear enough as it gathered its forces around Barad-dûr: to lay waste to Middle Earth, as Melkor had done in his madness, as Mairon had done at his behest, and later, in his grief.

Mairon could no more resist this dark shadow version of himself than could the Ring have resisted him, had it desire or will to do so, but in the end, he thought, either way it would all come to naught and so perhaps it did not matter. In weariness, he let himself slip far away into pleasanter memories.


	3. Part One, Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon floats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> art by Zomburai!

For a long time, all was dark. He bent as the shadow willed him to bend; it was, if anything, easier than the days after Melkor’s return from Valinor. Then, he had to force himself to bend against his own inclinations; to learn, slowly, that his words were no longer favored and only his service was yet prized. Now, there were no illusions to lose, and only a master to serve, with no choice whatsoever in the matter. He wondered, sometimes, if he should have left Melkor then and sought to carve out his own kingdom, or whether, in the end, it would never had made any difference. Besides, everything he did, everything he was, everything he had become had been to make of himself what Melkor wanted.

He bent himself to service, and, without hope, to loneliness and darkness. For a long time, there was nothing but the preparation for battle and then the battle itself. He watched, trapped within, as something that had once been inside him threatened to break the realm open. He brought ruin and destruction, but now in service to no one, nothing but mindless violence. Even the Orcs—all that were left of Melkor and Mairon’s early children—the shadow wasted in battle after battle. Mairon would never have been _wasteful_ like this. Casualties were inevitable during war, but it had always thrilled him to ensure he spent no more than he needed to. Even if it hadn’t brought Melkor’s jealously guarded words of praise, it was worth it, just to do the thing right. But the abhorrent shadow that now controlled him clearly saw no reason to.

Wearily, he bent to the necessity, until in the chaos of the battlefield, pressed back by Elves and Men alike, the shadow faltered, and Isildur Elendil’s son cut off the finger of the physical form it had forged with Mairon’s aid and took possession of what remained of Mairon. The Man stood in Sammath Naur and held the Ring that was Mairon’s prison in his hand, and Mairon heard another Elf’s arguments to destroy it. If it were destroyed, he was fairly sure he would be destroyed with it, but it was the old question of whether that would mean the succor of the Void or the torment of Mandos, and Mairon was afraid.

He let the fear show, let his eyes entrap the Man’s gaze, and Isildur said, “It is too beautiful. I will not destroy it, but take it as weregild for my father and brother.”

The Elf followed him, still trying to argue, but Mairon curled up inside his golden prison and was silent.

In dreams, he found he could come to Isildur and whisper counsel into his ears, but he was weary and abandoned his half-hearted plans after the first few nights. Isildur would go to hell in his own way, and Mairon saw no need to speed him there or help him avoid it; of Men and Elves he was very tired at this point. Elves had taken away the love his master bore for him, and Men—thinking of Men now always made him think of Ar-Pharazôn, who had defiled Mairon’s form that had been intended for Melkor only.

When Orcs came upon Isildur, it gave him some little pleasure to slip from the Man’s finger, to be freed of masters who did not deserve his service and to gain a little peace. He lay in dark water, and Isildur’s blood seeped down around him.

For a long time, he slept an uneasy sleep beneath the waters of the Anduin. At times, there was sunlight; at others, there was rain or clouds. Fish swam near him, and weeds grew around him, and Mairon was as near contentedness as he had been for many an age. After a time, it grew dull, and he slept more and more, and his loneliness became greater, and he wished for an end, but he was powerless to bring one about. Perhaps he might have lain there until the Door of Night was broken, but for two little people fishing on the river one day, whose sharp eyes caught the glitter of the Ring’s circumference.

Weary as he was of loneliness, Mairon’s attention was caught, and he stretched forth a little of his power and touched their small minds. It was more than he had intended. For an instant, all three of them were connected, and Mairon saw—

_Tea with Grandmother, with the beautiful porcelain plates with cherries painted on them—_

_A contest of wits, which Sméagol won, moving little pieces on an unfamiliar board like little armies—_

_A contest of stamina, which Déagol won, his fleet feet running on and on—_

_A quick kiss one of them had shared with a girl beneath a tree from which colored leaves fell slowly—_

And Déagol and Sméagol saw—

_The brilliant light in his Master’s eyes as he stared out across his kingdom—_

_That regard turned towards Mairon himself, and those long-fingered hands holding him close, nothing between them as Melkor’s voice whispered in his ear, “little flame, my most precious,” and the feeling of Mairon’s pleasure and safety, held tight there—_

_And three bright gems, brighter than anything that yet remained in the world of Arda, three bright gems that brought nothing but suffering, for all that they were the most beautiful of anything that had ever been created—_

\--and the Silmarils _burned_ , even in Mairon’s memory—

And Sméagol killed Déagol for the gleaming shine that lay within the Ring, and Mairon screamed as he felt the pain of it, but he could not fight it when the creature with the madness of the Silmarils shining in his eyes took him up and fled.

Darkness came upon him then.

~

_“Master, Master, please,” Mairon whines, one hand clutching at the pillows as the other flails wildly. Melkor holds him tight and helpless, thrusting into him with a rhythm that is just a shade too slow, and Mairon writhes backward, trying to impale himself on his master’s cock._

_“Are you not the one who constantly advocates patience?” Melkor murmurs amusedly, his breath ghosting across Mairon’s ear._

_It is only Melkor who can do this to him: who can reduce him to a breathless, mewling heap, who can make him feel safe in this utter loss of control, this ultimate humiliation. Mairon wails as Melkor’s hand touches his erect member, brushing at it arrhythmically—not enough. Not quite. Not—_

_“I can’t,” he gabbles. “I, please, Master, I need to come, I need it, I—” Close. He is close. Just a little more friction—_

_“No, precious,” Melkor tells him. “You climax only on my orders, and I do not order it. Not yet.”_

_Mairon gasps and bites at the pillow, trying not to rut into the bed. He squeezes his eyes shut against the sensations, as every strike sends pleasure spiking through him, so much that it is bleeding from pleasure into pain. Those two are much the same where Melkor is concerned, however, Mairon thinks dizzily. A hand twists in his hair, sending sensation spiking through his scalp and pulling his head up. Little enough pain this night, in comparison to some others; though Mairon enjoys pain meted out by Melkor more than anything, he is still recovering from an injury inflicted during an unforeseen rockfall a few days ago, and it seems Melkor has not deemed his form sturdy enough yet for some of their more vigorous pursuits. Mairon bows to his judgment in such matters, if not in many others._

_“Master,” he whines, voice muffled by the pillow, and the thrusting slows even a little more. “Master, please.”_

_Melkor nips possessively at the back of his neck, his voice a little breathless as he murmurs, “Needy tonight, aren’t you, precious?”_

_He is; more than the burning desire to climax, he wants Melkor to take him until his mind is blanked of anything but the other’s presence, until he has surrendered to the vast, powerful darkness so completely that his flame is swallowed up by it. “I need you,” he says, helplessly. “I need you.”_

_“Yes,” Melkor groans, and he speeds up the pace of his thrusts. “Open your mouth, little flame.” When Mairon rapidly complies, he slides two fingers inside his mouth. “Suck,” Melkor orders. “Use your mouth for something other than complaining.”_

_“’es,” Mairon manages happily, taking the hand down as far as he can go. He is falling, teetering now, holding himself back from the brink of orgasm by main force, so filled by Melkor he thinks it might be enough, just enough, suspended here, safe—_

_“Ah,” Melkor says in his ear, teeth nipping, “mine, my little flame, my precious—”_

_Mairon feels himself seizing up no matter how he tries to stop it, wave after wave of mindblanking pleasure rolling through him—_

\--and he woke to darkness beneath the roots of a mountain, and it was not Melkor’s voice that repeated, “Mine, my own, my _precioussss_ ,” in eerie, hollow mockery. Mairon shrank from the creature’s touch, but all he could do was retreat deeper and deeper into the hollow golden band that had become his entire world.

Time slipped away. He had no sunlight, no respite. The creature that had been Sméagol should have been mortal, but, though it grew older, it seemed never to weaken. Perhaps this was not a surprise, Mairon thought bitterly, considering the fate of the Nine. He was trapped in a web of his own devising, with no way to break free. He wondered if it was a punishment meted out by Ilúvatar, in the end, or just sheer bad luck, or if some part of him had wanted to be free of a life grown hollow without Melkor, the cruelties he had inflicted on Elves and Men so wanton and meaningless without his master to serve and protect.

He ceased raging and trying to break his bonds quite quickly. He slept, and he let the sleeping stretch, tried to ignore the pawing of unpleasant hands upon him. The voice made him shudder when he heard it, terrified it would replace the memory of Melkor’s beautiful voice and tarnish the words that he still cherished. He slept and faded into memory and wondered if it would ever end.

Because he had slept so much, he was slow to recognize it when something changed. Like a swelling chord that went slowly from inaudible to unignorable, he felt a power growing in the air that he had not been near in many ages. A name settled on his lips as a memory rose inside him—

_The forge is bright and Mairon has not slept in long hours. Outside, the silvery light of Iluin mingles with a soft sheen of rain, turning the mist into a thing of bright beauty as it diffuses the light. Mairon does not look, still stinging over Aulë’s rebuke. He knows his fingers will itch to create with it, even so, and it will only hurt for no gain. Perfection must be attained, but only—he strike viciously against the anvil and the soft metal he has just drawn from the forge warps and bends—only to the degree allowed by Ilúvatar._

_The door blows open and somewhat against his will Mairon glances up to see the Maia the storm has swept in, his long, silver hair lying in a wet and tangled mess against his coarse grey robes. “Greetings, friend Mairon,” the Maia says, his spirit disgustingly undampened by his fana's current overly damp situation. Mairon grunts and strikes the metal another blow with his hammer._

__

_“I cannot see why you go abroad in such weather,” he snorts after a moment._

_It is intended as a dismissal, but the other does not seem to take it as such; instead, he crosses to stand by the forge, warming his hands at the fire. “It is a sorrowful kind of weather,” he says thoughtfully. “Nienna is much abroad, and I enjoy spending time with her.”_

_  
“Why do you enjoy such an unpleasant feeling so much?” Mairon asks, drawn into the conversation grudgingly and against his will by his own native curiosity._

_“I do not enjoy it above and beyond other feelings,” his unwanted companion responds. “Only it is a part of Arda and one that seems often neglected by the other Maiar. Happiness is never free from sorrow, but grief must be understood so it can be healed.”_

_“I suppose.” Mairon feels inside him again the mess of unwanted emotions that he cannot tamp down or send away. “I’m sorry for giving you such a poor welcome. I’m very weary.”_

_“Everyone speaks about how hard you work.” There is a pause. “Mairon…I believe Aulë is concerned for you.”_

_“Did he send you to speak with me?” Mairon asks grimly. “I have nothing to say.”_

_“He did not.” Droplets of water splash sizzling across the anvil as the other Maia shakes his head. “Ah—I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”_

_“It doesn’t matter,” Mairon sighs. “If he didn’t send you—”_

_“I just—thought you might be hurting. That perhaps you could use a friendly ear.”_

_It tugs at Mairon again, but he pushes it back down. He cannot bear to hear once again why he should not feel as he does. “No, thank you. Perhaps another time.”_

_“Perhaps. Then I will bother you no longer.” The Maia rises, stretches, and makes his way back to the door. “Should you need me, Mairon, you may call for me—”_

_Mairon looks up. “Thank you—”_

Olórin.


	4. Part One, Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon breaks free, with a bit of timely help.

Olórin.

He was very near, somewhere beneath this same mountain range and slowly winding closer. Mairon trembled, wondering if Olórin would be able to feel him as well, but perhaps not within the confines of his current prison. He did not know how much the Ring might damp his presence, though he suspected it might be a substantial amount. The first feeling of relief—Olórin wouldn’t know he was here and wouldn’t be able to find him—ebbed away almost immediately. Did he want to spend more countless eons here, pawed by a pathetic creature and slowly withering away into dreams and nothingness?

Olórin was kind. He understood grief. He would not forgive Mairon any of his actions, but he might at least—he might at least _listen_. He might at least grant Mairon some kind of peace, might perhaps allow him to aid in the defeat of the Shadow that surely they both hated. Even if it meant the Halls of Mandos, Mairon wasn’t certain any longer that he wouldn’t prefer that agony over this. 

Now that he had decided, he was suddenly shaken with a frantic desperation. He tried to call out, but he did not think his voice reached beyond the imprisoning band of gold. No matter how great his power to be wielded, he could no longer wield it for himself in any real capacity. He had become in truth the instrument he sought to be for Melkor but no longer with the precious free will that Melkor—at least before their first defeat—had always, always proffered him.

In the end, all that he could really do was plant a whisper in Sméagol’s ear, an unease. He had taken to spending little time outside of the foul hole in the center of the mountain that he had made a shrine to Mairon’s beauty, and it took all of Mairon’s honeyed words to convince him to venture up to spy on what the orcs were doing, to flame his fear of losing his Precious—and Mairon still shuddered whenever he heard that word on the loathsome creature’s tongue—enough to encourage him even partway up the passage. Nothing could induce him to go any further, so Mairon decided it was worth the risk to slip quietly from his finger. At least if he were to languish here in the dark forever, it would be with the memory of Melkor’s sweet words and not with the blasphemy of hearing them on the tongue of this forsaken object of misery.

Lying there, he could feel flickers of Olórin’s presence; even that was soothing. Mairon wondered if the other Maia had always possessed this ability—perhaps learned it from Nienna—and if he himself simply hadn’t noticed it, too preoccupied with his own troubles. It occurred to him that they might have been friends if he had been willing. The thought pained him for some time before he gave it up, reasoning that Olórin would only have forsaken him as had the other Maiar when he threw in his lot with Melkor. And he could never have done anything else. He could have _chosen_ otherwise, if he had willed it, but in the simple fact that Melkor had given him a choice lay the irony that if he wanted to keep exercising those choices there was only one choice to make—

_“I will not force you to accompany me,” Melkor tells him, those blue eyes shining with a bright eager power that Mairon wishes he could reach out and touch. “I offer it, Little Flame, freely, but you must reach out and take it yourself.”_

_“I cannot leave Aulë,” Mairon says, because those are the words that Aulë would have him say, and Melkor laughs and takes his chin in one large hand._

_“You mean you will not,” he says. Mairon swallows and is silent, and Melkor leans forward and murmurs in his ear, “I would let you speak your objections freely. I would let you make whatever creations you deemed most valuable in my service. As long as you could justify it, there is nothing I would not allow you.”_

_His full attention on Mairon—the full attention of the most powerful of the Valar—is something unlike Mairon has ever felt, and he shivers, telling himself it is indecision when in truth he has already decided._

_“Why me?” he asks helplessly, once the moment has stretched too long, too huge._

_Melkor drops the seductive tone and pose—somewhat to Mairon’s uncomfortable regret—and regards him almost gently. “Because what they have done to you is a crime,” he says. “Because you made a clever thing and I found you crying over being forced to destroy it, because they would turn a piece of gold into tin for the crime of being too beautiful.”_

Somehow, Mairon could not cry: it made the sorrow worse. The pain grew and grew, with no respite—not the pain of a beating or an injury, which he could have endured, but the endless agony of loss with no end. Finally, he slipped away into darkness again.

Quick fingers about the Ring woke him, and he shivered into awareness to find that someone else had taken hold of him. From the small size of the hand, he thought at first it was Sméagol and that all his plans had come to naught, but he soon realized, as he was slipped into a warm pocket smelling faintly of tobacco that he had been wrong. And he could feel Olórin’s touch still strong upon this being.

_Well—where to now?_ Mairon thought, feeling an unaccustomed surge of hope as he was carried off once again into darkness.


	5. Part One, Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bilbo has a mysterious visitor.

There was someone smoking in his garden, which Bilbo found quite rude. Particularly as it smelled like the very _best_ pipeweed, and he thought he ought to have been invited. He couldn’t quite remember how he had come to be standing in his kitchen; he had the queerest feeling that he had been having a most exciting and not entirely pleasant dream. Still, dream or no dream, whoever was smoking outside most definitely ought to be at least sharing that delicious pipeweed, so he shook off the feeling and made his way to the door.

Outside, as he’d expected, there sat a most strange and lovely person. He was tall and slender, with the pointed ears and naked, beardless face of an elf, but something about him did not seem entirely elvish. Bilbo had never seen an elf with such elaborately pierced ears, for one thing. Golden wire threaded through the strange person’s ear, forming a dragon whose breath was a single red stone set on the inside of his earlobe. Hair like red gold cascaded down over his shoulders, but he was wearing a simple white shirt and brown leggings beneath a stained leather apron. He was also leaning back on Bilbo’s chair, which he had placed upon his favorite spot on the hill, and smoking out of Bilbo’s favorite pipe.

“Well, _really_ ,” Bilbo said, when he had got his breath back. This was almost as bad at dwarves rooting about in his foodstuffs. “That’s my favorite pipe, you know. How did you get it?”

Bright brown eyes shading towards red gleamed at him. “Thank you for your hospitality. I am Fëacormo. May I ask with whom I’m conversing?” He did not get up, nor did he offer to return the contested item.

“Oh, dash it all,” Bilbo said unhappily, but he bowed. It was rather a sloppy job, but he was still being less rude than his most recent uninvited guest. “Bilbo Baggins at your service. Where did you come from, anyway?” Despite his physical resemblance to an elf, Bilbo realized, there was something more than a little like Gandalf about him. “Oh dear me, are you a wizard?” he asked, a little helplessly.

The self-proclaimed Fëacormo chuckled. “I have been called such,” he replied, waving a hand in the air. He did not blow such excellent smoke rings as Gandalf, but there was something about him that made it difficult for Bilbo to look away.

“And I am what I am called,” he continued after a pause, which was such a riddling sort of answer that Bilbo decided he could really only be a wizard. No one else but Gandalf ever spoke in such confusing terms.

“Well, what are you doing _here_ , at any rate?” Bilbo asked, rather peevishly. Something had made him bewilderingly more exasperated by than scared of wizards these days. “And sitting on my lawn and smoking my pipe.”

“I cannot be anywhere else,” responded his visitor, imperturbably. He flashed bright eyes at Bilbo once again. “Do tell Olórin when you wake that fire is no way to treat with such good friends as wolves can be.”

“When I…” Bilbo frowned. That was right—he had gone to sleep in an eyrie; he could no more have woken in his own dear hobbit-hole than he could have sprouted wings and flown back to the Shire. Which meant, in turn, that he must—he turned around in a circle, but there was nothing odd about the place around him.

“Yes, Mr. Baggins, you are dreaming,” Fëacormo said. “But with me here your dreams are quite—sensical.” He looked about and nodded in approval. “And delightfully orderly, I must say. If this is truly what your garden looks like, I have nothing but praise for such well-kept rows of flowers.”

“I—ah—well, that is, thank you,” Bilbo said, stumbling over the praise. “But look here, those wargs would have killed us, I’m not sure what you were expecting.”

“Just show them a little kindness,” smiled his mysterious visitor, but before Bilbo could muster a rejoinder, he was sitting up with a gasp in the eyrie and had quite no idea why the words on his lips were, “Well, really!”


	6. Part One, Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bilbo dreams once more.

The second time it happened, something about it made him realize quite immediately that he was dreaming, even though this time he did not find himself back in his own little hobbit-hole; indeed, there was little difference between where he had laid down to sleep and where he now opened his eyes. He was still in the large hall of Beorn, but it was empty: there was no sign of either dwarves or Gandalf. There was a fire in the great hearth, but no other source of light, and in front of it what Bilbo at first took to be a great grey rug thrown over a rather unusually-shaped bolster.

In this dream state, he recalled the dream of the previous night, and the unusual visitor—Fëacormo. He had remembered nothing of it the entire day but now it seemed quite real—almost more real than the events that had happened while he was awake, which, even though he could remember them, had assumed a strange, pallid, unreal quality in his memories, as if he had woken for the first time the night before and the rest of his life was nothing but a queer imitation.

He did not quite like the feeling, and he wondered if it was connected with Fëacormo. He saw quite easily that a wizard might have power over dreams, for example, and that made him wonder if he would see the man again. Was he here? Was he outside, smoking on _Beorn’s_ lawn? But when he went and pressed his face to one of the windows it was quite pitch-black outside, and he could see nothing. There was just the fire and the bolster in front of it.

With a frown, Bilbo turned back towards it. It really was a _most_ unusually shaped bolster. At that point, the thing in front of the fire gave a huffing sound, pricked up two ears and raised its head. Bilbo, it must be confessed, fairly shrieked, as the great grey wolf looked over at him. The next moment he was looking for a tree to climb, or, failing that, some drapes.

The wolf watched him with interest for a moment or two, then got up—it was huge, its head a handspan higher than Bilbo’s—and easily caught up to him as he scrabbled at the back wall. It stuck a large nose into his hair and snuffled at him with interest, then pushed its nose all the way down his chest and—

“Stop that!” Bilbo yelped, swatting its nose without thinking. It blinked, snarled mildly, and backed off a few paces; then, with a strange, surging motion, it humped upward and grew about another handspan. Red-gold hair spilled down across its shoulders, and Bilbo suddenly found that he was staring upward at Fëacormo, who stood before him shuddering and also quite naked. “Dear me!” Bilbo squeaked.

“You’ve got shapeshifters on the mind, I see,” the wizard said.

“I suppose—I suppose I do,” Bilbo said tentatively.

“I have not felt able to do that in a long time,” Fëacormo continued quietly. “You have my thanks, Mr. Baggins. Although if it will not trouble you too greatly, I would resume that form. Things are—simpler, when I am in it.”

“Oh, well, very well, very well,” Bilbo said. “As long as you don’t attack me. I suppose this is only a dream, but I have no mind to get torn limb from limb, even if it is imaginary.”

“I can still tell friend from foe,” Fëacormo responded, with a sharp-toothed grin, and promptly sank back into the wolf shape, shuddering slightly again. Bilbo wondered if the transformation pained him. Whatever the right of it, the massive wolf shook its head, then padded wearily over to the fire and sank down in front of it again, with a heavy sigh.

After a bit of pacing, Bilbo followed him over. Although it was a dream, the fire still felt warm, and he sat down beside it and felt quite drowsy. A little while later, the great wolf flopped over on its back, tongue lolling out, and made a soft sort of whining noise. Bilbo blinked at it in confusion. It kicked out one leg, spread out its legs more and made another demanding kind of sound. Not ever having had much to do with wolves close up, Bilbo still found himself stymied.

The wolf sighed and coughed, and Fëacormo’s voice issued from its throat. “It means I would like a belly rub,” he explained. “Have you never seen a dog before?”

Bilbo almost laughed at how ridiculous the immense creature was. “I have never rubbed anything’s belly,” he said. “I may not do a very good job.”

It did not speak again, just gave him a pleading look out of liquid dark eyes. Despite the obvious power of the creature’s body, the positioning of it was very vulnerable, and after a moment, Bilbo scooted over and placed on hand on its belly. When there was no complaint, he began to move his hand around in circles on it, with a vague memory of his mother rubbing his back when he was a little faunt. He had the sense that somehow this strange being was looking for comfort, and he saw no reason to deny him. After a moment, the wolf huffed and let its eyes shut and its head loll to the side, relaxing. Bilbo stroked it as the night wore on and did not know when the dream ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just saying, Mairon deserves tummy rubs


	7. Part One, Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short conversation in a dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter because apparently this is just my fic of short chapters? anyway, I'll try to update again tomorrow

He was feeling quite an old hand at this when he opened his eyes to find himself in the halls of Rivendell, with Fëacormo standing with one hand on a fluted pillar and looking out across the valley. “Elvish work, is it not?” he said, turning back to Bilbo. Looking past him, Bilbo saw that a shadow lay across the valley. All the lights were out and the river flowed low and sluggish, surrounded by dry grass.

“Yes,” he agreed. “But what is happening out there?”

“A shadow,” Fëacormo said softly, and Bilbo could not tell if it was anger in his voice, or fear. “There is a shadow reaching across this land, can you not feel it?”

The very air around them seemed to darken, and the pillars of Rivendell widened and cracked, vines twining about them, until they stood on the thin pale strip of path that led into Mirkwood with the Elven archway astride it. “Mirkwood?” Bilbo squeaked. “Yes. The forest does not like us, I think.”

“Forests and I do not always get along,” Fëacormo said, “But it is true that this one is more hostile than many. _Dorthonion_ , it used to be called, the Land of the Pine Trees, but now it is _Taur-nu-fuin_ , or sometimes _Deldúwath_ _,_ but they do not ask, those who live there, what it is that causes the change.” He frowned. “Why did you let Olórin leave without telling him about the ring?” he asked.

“Well, I—” Bilbo stammered. “Hang on, who is this ‘Olórin’ person? I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“You called me ‘wizard’, I assume you call him such as well, but what name he goes by in Middle Earth I do not know. It is difficult, sometimes, to reach my senses beyond—” He halted, seeming to draw himself up short, “this place,” he finished, after a moment.

“The only wizard I know in the waking world is Gandalf,” Bilbo told him. He glanced around nervously. “This would be much easier, you know, if you talked to me when I was awake,” he pointed out. “You can hardly tell me I ought to do things when I can’t remember that you exist unless I’m asleep.”

“Well, that is true,” Fëacormo said in amusement. “But I am afraid it is not a situation I am able to remedy. To give to mortals unfettered access to the realm of dreams is not a power I possess. In any case, why did you not tell—Gandalf—about this ring?”

“Oh…” Bilbo put his hands in his pockets. “Well—I don’t know. It didn’t seem very important, I suppose. Didn’t want to bother him.”

There was a long pause. Fëacormo looked at him with his red-gold eyes, and Bilbo found he rather wanted to look away, but he had the bit between his teeth and wizard or no wizard Fëacormo could not be so much worse than Lobelia. There was surprise in those bright eyes, but it was Fëacormo who looked away first. “Perhaps it isn’t important,” he admitted, stretching, the lines of his back drawn taut beneath his old charred shirt. “After all, what need do you have of Olórin when you have me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Mairon refers to "Delduwath" he's actually incorrect, because there were two forests in Middle Earth referred to as "Mirkwood", but Mairon is a bit...out of the loop. He's thinking here of the first Mirkwood that was Dorthonion; this is the later Mirkwood that was Eryn Galen.


	8. Part One, Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is much talk of spiders.

“I think we are all going to die,” Bilbo said gloomily. He had to admit it was nice to see the sunlight again, for his dreams the past few nights had been as dark as his days, and he had seen nothing of Fëacormo. But now he was dreaming of the sunlight above the forest, and the wind rustling through the trees, with the many, many purple butterflies swarming about him. And the red-haired wizard sat perched higher than he was, shading his eyes and looking out across the sea of green.

“Don’t be stupid if you can help it, Mr. Baggins,” Fëacormo retorted. “You’re nearly out of the wood. Look.”

“The trees go on forever in every direction!” Bilbo told him hotly.

“Nonsense,” Fëacormo said easily. “We’re at the bottom of a valley. Look at the way the land rises beneath the trees.”

“Oh,” said Bilbo, feeling rather a fool.

Fëacormo swung himself over and patted his cheek. “A simple enough illusion, if you know to look for it,” he said. His eyes flashed in that queer way of his, and it made Bilbo’s head buzz uneasily.

“Yes,” he agreed fuzzily. “But how did you know to look for it?”

“I always look for illusions,” Fëacormo told him softly, his voice strangely like the drone of sleepy honeybees. “You cannot spin a lie if you cannot see the truth for yourself.”

Something about this seemed damn strange—that odd, fey light in the wizard’s eyes—but Bilbo could already feel the claws of wakefulness catching at him, and all he could do was resolve to tell the dwarves that there was no cause for concern, for the forest would be ending shortly.

He blinked his eyes open to darkness and fear, and his dream teetered and fell away from him, leaving only a pair of angry golden eyes seared into his memory.

~

When next he slept and opened his eyes into dreams, it was to the ropes of sticky webbing he had so recently rescued the dwarves from. They were covered in the corpses of old spiders, and there was Fëacormo once again, standing with Sting in one hand and looking it over. 

“Give that back,” Bilbo said crossly, for he felt that Fëacormo was entirely too ready to take his things without asking, even in his dreams, and you must remember he had been having quite a trying time, so that his manners were not at their best.

“Here.” The wizard handed him the blade and looked around at the corpses. “That was exceeding well done, Mr. Baggins,” he said, and Bilbo felt that he was somewhat mollified by the praise.

“Well, you know, I just had to think very quickly, and I’ve always been good with stones, ever since I was a lad,” he said, halfway between bragging and humility.

“A neat and beautiful little deception and some delightful violence,” Fëacormo declared, then kicked one of the spiders’ corpses quite viciously. Again, a fey light glowed in his eyes.

“You don’t seem to much like spiders, do you?” Bilbo asked, and the wizard laughed, but the laugh had little merriment in it.

“No, I have no love for spiders,” he answered, and then he tipped his head back. “Would you let me mold your dreams, Mr. Baggins, and show you why that is?” he asked. “I have made so few things in such a long time, and I begin to see how such weaving might be done, but I will not do so if you do not consent to it.”

“What exactly do you mean, mold my dreams?” Bilbo asked cautiously. “You’re not to play about with my head now! I’ve no need for anyone rummaging about in here.”

“No, nothing like that. Just take the threads of where you are now and weave a story with your mind. It’s like telling a tale, but a little more hands’ on.” Bilbo wasn’t certain he liked the look that Fëacormo flashed him at that, but he felt he had been growing to know him, of late, although he might not yet call them friends. And besides, Mr. Baggins was feeling quite proud of himself and his heroics, and he thought that there was little enough to be afraid of in his own dreams. 

“All right then,” he agreed. “Let’s see your tale.”

Light flashed and became lightning, crackling across the sky amid a slew of storm clouds. Fëacormo stood at his side as a great grey wolf, but then his voice spoke in Bilbo’s ear, and he looked up to see that the wizard’s human form still stood behind him. “I was waiting,” Fëacormo said. “For a long time I had been waiting beneath the darkened skies of Middle Earth.” There was a hollowness in his voice that made Bilbo’s chest ache a little in sympathy. “But I heard my summons—”

A great and terrible cry rang out across the rocks. Bilbo flinched, and the great wolf beside him began to run. All around them, flames sprang up out of the ground, and it seemed that he was flying beside it, down into that darkened valley. “And I came,” Fëacormo said. “I came and there She was.”

There was a black and loathsome pillar before Bilbo, great enough that even if he opened his arms he could not have spread them all the way about it. There was darkness beneath it, and a sizzling noise. “Look up, little burglar,” crooned the wizard, and Bilbo did.

She blotted out the sky. The thing that the flames and lightning revealed was a spider, in form similar to the ones he had fought that day, but so much greater and more horrible that Bilbo was frozen to the spot. She was bloated to immensity, this creature; sizzling venom dripped from her jaws in huge torrents, like a storm cloud spitting rain. The wolf dodged beneath her and ran, and they went with it. Bilbo trembled, even though this was a dream, because could such a creature ever have existed? Surely this was no true story, but only a tale to frighten children with.

At his side, he felt Fëacormo tremble too, and he followed his gaze up to the dark figure that stood at bay before the monster. He was larger than a Man, in face and form alike an Elf, with blue eyes like chips of ice, wearing a ragged black robe. One fist was tight-clenched; the other held a hammer with which he battered at the spider.

“What—” Bilbo managed to squeak.

“ _She_ was Ungoliant, weaver of darkness, devourer of light,” Fëacormo said in an almost singsong voice. “I led an army against her.”

All around them, flames sprang out of the ground, tall pillars of fire that grew arms and legs as Bilbo watched. They spread wings of shadow and of flame; they drew swords and whips of fire. Within the flames, he could see the hints of strange forms, some like Mens’, others less so, perhaps like beasts.

“For Melkor!” cried one, larger even than the rest, and its huge whip it wrapped about the spider’s leg.

The wolf tipped back its head and howled to the sky, then raced up the hill towards the large man-like form to interpose itself between him and the great spider, snarling, at bay, its hackles risen.

“I will not show you the whole battle, for it raged for a long, long time,” Fëacormo said, and the sky split open above them, faint stars twinkling down. The vast bulk of the immense spider twinkled into nothingness and seemed to fade away on the breeze. “But you can see why I do not have any love for spiders.”

“Y-Yes,” Bilbo agreed tremblingly. He had never seen anything like it in all his life, but now that it was gone, he was already looking about curiously. Above them, the wolf was bowing its head to the man or the wizard? Perhaps this was also a wizard. He took a few steps closer, but there was no sound as the wolf shrank back into just Fëacormo, and the dark-haired one looked down at him. He raised his clenched hand, and the fingers began to open. Within, Bilbo thought he caught sight of a gleam like starlight, and he wanted to see it more closely—

“ _No_!” Fëacormo’s voice rose in sudden terror; he flung up his hand and a strange darkness cut the whole vision in twain. “Wake, Bilbo—just wake—don’t look— _don’t look_ —”

Bilbo sat up in the forest with a gasp, a strange voice ringing in his ears. “Where on earth is Thorin?” he said.


	9. Part One, Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo and Thorin chat. Mairon watches and wonders.

Mairon was having more fun than he had had in thousands of years. He _liked_ Bilbo. The halfling was pompous and fussy and sometimes cowardly, but he was also clever and amusing. And he was kind to Mairon, even in the Ring, in a way no one had been in longer than Mairon wanted to admit. He loved the little snippets of dreamtime he got to share, and he even enjoyed paying attention to the ridiculous adventure Bilbo had gotten himself involved with. Thirteen dwarves and a burglar to slay a dragon and regain Erebor was an absolutely absurd thing to attempt, but Mairon liked their courage, although he was not particularly fond of the notion that all dragons needed slaying. Still, in this case, he supposed, they did have a point, and in any case they were nowhere near the Lonely Mountain as of yet, so that was something to worry about later. 

The elves were a problem. Mairon did not like Elves, in which sentiment he was apparently quite united with the dwarves, but like or dislike, he could not deny that they had power in this place. Poor Bilbo was starting to get quite frustrated with the situation and understandably so. No one liked to be imprisoned, and Bilbo was in a sort of limbo between imprisonment and freedom.

Mairon might advocate patience till he was blue in the face, and Bilbo might even agree, in dreams, but he could not carry the reason for his reassurance back into the daylight hours, and the words of someone you could not remember must ring rather hollow. So it was that Mairon was truly starting to feel Bilbo’s own impatience when the hobbit finally managed to make his way to the prison of Thorin Oakenshield.

The Maia had noticed that Bilbo seemed to crave Thorin’s approval above all else, but he did not know if the tender feelings the little hobbit was holding onto were friendship or something more complicated. It was clearly true, at the very least, that he cared a great deal about a dwarf whom Mairon himself found rather insufferable, and, if Mairon could not determine a good reason, he was at least happy enough to watch something of interest play out before him. He’d felt much closer to the adventure since Bilbo started having to wear the Ring almost all the time, and it was so easy to get lost in the moment. It was an odd feeling, but not an unpleasant one.

“Thorin Oakenshield,” Bilbo hissed through the bars, and the bearded head turned, a sudden light appearing behind eyes that had seemed dimmed almost beyond recognition.

“Master Baggins, as I live and breathe!” The dwarf king hurried to over and clasped Bilbo’s little hands through the bars. “But how come you to be hidden from my sight like this?”

Then Mairon had the pleasure of hearing Bilbo tell, in hasty whispers, the story of his coming by the Ring.

“And I don’t know what came over me,” Bilbo squeaked, “But I said, ‘what have I got in my pocket’, and Gollum could not guess!”

_Me,_ Mairon thought smugly. _I came over you_. He had been quite proud of that, although he was forced to admit it was one of the few times Bilbo had needed his aid in any other way than turning himself invisible. The little halfling was terrifyingly competent. In the old days, Mairon would have promoted him to commander within a week of his coming to Angband. It was rather offensive how little the dwarves seemed to regard him.

At least Thorin appeared suitably enthralled by Bilbo’s hurriedly muttered tale. “And I _will_ get you out,” Bilbo was saying now, earnestly. “I haven’t quite figured out the plan yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.”

Thorin grunted. “And put me in as much debt to you as I am to Gandalf, I shouldn’t wonder,” he snorted. “Well enough, burglar. You shall have my thanks—and more, when you get us out of this wretched dungeon.”

“Oh, never mind all that about debt,” Bilbo said crossly. “Surely by now you would accord me a friend, Thorin Oakenshield? I should certainly accord such a title to you.”

Mairon watched in great amusement as the wandering King Under the Mountain, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, hemmed and hawed and squirmed awkwardly under the irritable gaze of the pint-sized descendent of Bullroarer Took. After what was perhaps five minutes of attempting to deflect, the dwarf grumbled, “Aye, I suppose so, Mr. Baggins.”

“Very well,” Bilbo said primly. “Then I shall have to leave you so that I can come up with a suitably clever way for you to leave—but are there any messages I should pass on to the others?”

“The others? They are here as well?” Thorin asked eagerly.

“Oh, yes, indeed, the entire lot of you,” Bilbo said, sounding a little exasperated. “Thirteen dwarves I must help escape from an elvish prison—this is a bit beyond what was written in my contract, you know!”

Once again, Mairon thrilled to the delicious sight of a dwarf realizing they were in exceeding debt to a non-dwarf and not at all liking it.

“Still burglary, of a sort,” Thorin responded after a moment. 

“I suppose you are correct,” Bilbo acceded. “Stealing thirteen dwarves out from under the noses of innumerable elves will be quite the feat. In any case, tell me what message I should carry to the others, and I will be happy to do so.”

“Tell them not to lose heart,” Thorin says gruffly. “For we have a friend on our side who will soon have us breathing free air once more.”


	10. Part One, Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another short conversation. Bilbo wonders.

“Your Thorin is quite kingly, even bedraggled and half-drowned.” They were back in the Shire again, this time walking across the downs south of Hobbiton. A high blue sky arched overhead. It was much pleasanter in this dream than being awake, because Bilbo wasn’t sneezing his poor little head half off.

“He’s not _my_ Thorin,” Bilbo objected. “If anything, I suppose I am _his_ burglar. Although only contractually,” he finished primly.

Fëacormo chuckled. “Contract or no, you would give him your service, would you not?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I have gone to quite a lot of trouble on the behalf of those wretched dwarves, of course—” He paused. Fëacormo was staring off into the distance in way that seemed quite queer. “Why do you think of things so much in terms of service and—and—owning?” he asked. “It seems very strange to me. Gandalf doesn’t speak like that.”

“I am not Gandalf.” Fëacormo drew himself up in that way he had when he was starting to get angry. It used to scare Bilbo a little, but now it did not do so. A clever wizard he was, indeed—he had given Bilbo some quite excellent advice on several occasions, which he had on a few actually been able to remember long enough to carry into the waking world—but not, Bilbo thought, so wise as Gandalf. He did seem to care about Bilbo and Bilbo’s opinion, though.

Bilbo strongly suspected he had something to do with that ring he had picked up in the goblin caverns. After all, Master Fëacormo was very clever but not so clever as not to give his name as something that simply meant ‘spirit of the ring’ in Elvish. It had taken Bilbo a bit to catch on—long enough that he was rather ashamed of himself—but as Fëacormo never seemed to want to speak of it, Bilbo was polite enough to honor the unspoken request.

“So it is simply your nature to think of things in such terms?” Bilbo prodded instead.

Fëacormo flashed him an angry look, threw up a hand and made lightning dance across the dream-sky. It was a very lovely temper tantrum, and Bilbo watched it in some amusement. “For a very long time, I served only one master,” Fëacormo told him, after a long moment. “As grumpy as your Thorin, too.”

“And who was that master?”

There was a distinct hesitation before the wizard responded. “I—would rather not speak his name, but I will show you.”

The clouds parted, driven away by a high, golden roof. Beneath their feet and around them rolled out a stone floor with a set of anvils in the center and a huge fireplace to one side. It had been made for larger folk than hobbits, and by more skilled hands. Indeed, it was the most beautifully made or tended forge that Bilbo had ever seen in his life, although he did not tend to make a habit of loitering in such places. “Is this where you trained?” he asked.

“This is where I began my life upon Middle Earth,” Fëacormo answered distractedly. “And it is where I met my master.” He waved a hand again, and a shape formed from rising motes of glittering dust. Bilbo had seen it once before, at a distance, when the wizard had shown him his fight against the creature Ungoliant. It was not so tall, now, though still a full head taller than Fëacormo. Something about him in this setting seemed gentler, and there was a smile upon his face, as if he were not carved from ice. Long, black hair fell about his shoulders, and he wore gleaming armor and a thin silver circlet upon his head. Something about him gave Bilbo a strange feeling, but he shook it off.

When he looked over, he saw that Fëacormo was on his knees, his head bowed and shoulders shaking—he was weeping. “I would have followed him to the ends of Arda and beyond,” he said, so softly Bilbo could barely hear him.

“Why didn’t you?” Bilbo asked, and Fëacormo turned upon him a look of such blind pain he had only seen, once before, when Thorin spoke of Erebor.

“He went where I could not follow,” Fëacormo returned, and Bilbo laid a hand on his shoulder in quiet comfort. Fëacormo did not shake it off.


	11. Part One, Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dwarves and the Burglar arrive at the Lonely Mountain. Mairon and Bilbo have a disagreement.
> 
> Mairon, despite definitely not wanting to be, is right.

Mairon did not know what had possessed him to share Melkor’s likeness with Bilbo, but he had to confess he was not sorry he had done so. His burden seemed lighter, if only a little, for sharing it with another. They did not speak of it, but just to know that someone else knew was enough to give him comfort.

In the meantime, there was Bilbo’s ‘master’ to think of. A gruffer, more unpleasant dwarf Mairon had never had the dubious pleasure of encountering, but he was kind to Bilbo, in his own way. Certainly the hobbit had clearly risen in his esteem since the affair of the barrels. And Bilbo appreciated it. He went quite red about the ears when Thorin sang his praises to all and sundry, although he was never very eloquent about receiving praise ( _“Thag you very buch_ ” indeed—Mairon needed to teach him to accept his due with grace).

It was just as well, Mairon thought, that Thorin had warmed to the little burglar, because now began by far the least pleasant part of this quest. For Mairon, the travel from Laketown to the Lonely Mountain was dull; for Bilbo and company it was as well, but it was also tiring and hungry work. Several times Mairon heard the little hobbit bemoaning to himself that there was not even any excitement to be had, which he found very amusing considering Bilbo’s reaction to the great overabundance of excitement in Thranduil’s halls in Mirkwood. Still. He hoped that Bilbo would continue to retain enough sense and competence to keep in particular himself and with luck most of the dwarves from being eaten by a tired and grumpy dragon.

Mairon wondered at that. He had not known that there were any dragons left alive in Middle Earth, and much as he had found himself becoming invested in the quest, he was not at all enthusiastic about the prospect of watching these dwarves kill the last one. They would never see its beauty, not when it had kicked them all out of their hall and stolen all their gold. It was, perhaps, a reasonable grievance on their part, but Mairon could not but help thinking of the little dragons in the early days of Utumno, the way they had all cuddled up to him and crawled all over him, making Melkor jealous.

“I can’t help that I am a flame spirit,” Mairon would tease him in those days, and Melkor would stomp away and then come back and give him some small token of affection and then ask, rolling his eyes to the high heavens, if he could please be permitted to pet his own dragons now, thank you very much.

The dwarves went right up the side of the mountain, complaining about the devastation the whole way, so loudly that if the dragon had been more than half-awake it would surely have devoured them all immediately. Mairon’s practiced eye saw the way the land had withered was more than could be accounted for by simple dragonflame. A fire might burn down a forest, but the forest would regrow, stronger and healthier than before: it was a pattern he had seen many times, particularly in the early days of Utumno. In Mordor, he had cultivated it.

Here, the grass was sickly and wilted; much of it was brown and dead. All the trees were dead as well, nothing but rotting stumps jutting out of the mountain’s carcass. The dragon was sick, then, or too old, perhaps, and as it slowly withered, it was poisoning the land about it. Mairon sighed to himself, but at least it meant his purpose aligned more clearly than ever with Bilbo’s: a dragon like this deserved to be put out of its misery, since there was no way he had the power anymore to heal such a sickness, if indeed he ever had.

They had a dreary time of it for a while. Camped out on the hillside, everyone was in a terrible temper, including Thorin and Bilbo. Mairon spent a few nights not bothering to talk to Bilbo even in dreams because he was so liable to get his head bitten off. He supposed the hobbit did have a point; it couldn’t be pleasant camping out like this, with a dragon potentially breathing down your necks. The loneliness made his head swim and drew him back to darker days, though, so after a little while he just endured the snubs and snipes and complaints and tried to craft Bilbo dreams that would leave him rested and calmer.

Fortunately, the entrance was found before he had actually resorted to sending Bilbo nightmares in sheer frustration. Once again, the little burglar was sent to investigate, which he did without much complaint. Mairon was pleased to hear the dwarves—especially Thorin—murmuring about how he was to be really well-compensated. At least they had a clear idea of what competence looked like, even if he felt it had taken them too long to come to this point.

Bilbo did quite well in talking to the dragon, although there were several points at which Mairon winced, and not a few hairy little moments at which he wondered if he was going to end up inside a dragon’s belly for untold aeons. But in the end, Bilbo winkled out the secret of the dragon’s weak point and managed to get all the dwarves inside the mountain in the nick of time to avoid anyone being eaten by anyone else. It was overall masterfully done, and Mairon told him so.

“I suppose the adventure must be coming to an end soon,” Bilbo said when the thrush came back and brought tidings—translated through a raven’s mouth—of the dragon’s death and the destruction of Esgaroth. “I have enjoyed myself, but I must say I am looking forward to having a bit of time to calm down.”

“Do you think so?” Mairon asked him cautiously. They sat together in the tall Dwarvish halls, empty but for the gold of generations. It was a beautiful place; Mairon preferred the architecture here to that of the Elvish-made Rivendell. The work of Elves always looked as if a stiff breeze might destroy it, but here you could see beauty _and_ power.

“After all, the dragon has been slain,” Bilbo pointed out. “That’s a fine ending to any adventure, isn’t it?”

“And what of the Arkenstone?” Mairon asked.

Bilbo shifted uncomfortably. “Well…” He trailed off. “I’ll give it to Thorin when the time’s right.”

It was beautiful, that white gem—not as beautiful as some that Mairon had seen, but it was still a masterpiece of Dwarvish crafting—that gem that someone had found hidden away at the heart of a mountain. Seeing it in Bilbo’s hand had sent a chill right through Mairon, as if he had been plunged into icy water.

“You’d be better off hiding it under some heap of treasure for the dwarves to find,” he advised Bilbo.

“Somehow I don’t quite like to,” Bilbo said softly. “I have a queer feeling it will be useful or important. But in a few days, no matter what, I shall _have_ to give it to Thorin.” He ran a thoughtful finger over the dream of the Ring in his pocket.

In a few days, he did not give it to Thorin. Instead, he devised the worst plan he had come up with yet—all the worse, because it was _clever_ , horribly clever, and no matter what Mairon said, he couldn’t get Bilbo to see that it would all go wrong.

“Thorin will understand,” he kept saying stubbornly. “I’m sure he will understand.”

“Then why are you doing this behind his back?” Mairon demanded. “Why do you feel the need?”

“Once he sees that I’ve stopped all this dreadful fighting, he’ll understand.” And nothing Mairon said could dissuade Bilbo’s stubborn resolve. His faith was terrible for Mairon to behold, and he fled from it, hiding for a full night in the unchanging gold of the Ring. But he could not leave the little hobbit to face his doom alone, even if Bilbo could not see him, and he returned in the morning, casting his awareness outward just in time for Kilí, who was on watch, to announce a host of Elves and Men at the foot of the mountain.

Mairon had steeled himself, over and over again, but nothing could have prepared him for the moment when the light in Thorin’s eyes turned murderous, when he lifted a protesting and bewildered Bilbo up as if he were about to toss him off the mountain. The look on Bilbo’s face, more than anything else, made old memories come horribly to life—

\-- _“Lieutenant. I’ve been looking for you.”_

_Mairon glances up, wiping sweat his forehead. “I’m sorry, my lord, I didn’t know. I’ve been experimenting to improve the orcs’ armor.” The forge glows about him, and he smiles, feeling a warmth rise inside him that he hasn’t felt in a long, long time._

_“I need you to do something for me.”_

_“What is that, my lord?”_

_“Forge a suitable crown for these.” Melkor raises his hand; inside it, nestled in a dark cloth, lie three shining jewels, twinkling bright as starlight. They are beautiful, but Mairon is more concerned with the way that hand looks—as if it has been burned._

_“My lord—you’re hurt!” He almost drops his tongs but manages to set them down before hurrying over._

_“It is nothing,” Melkor says. “Lieutenant. Pay attention.”_

_“But, my lord—”_

_“PAY ATTENTION!”_

_Mairon stops and looks up at him. “I—I’m sorry, my lord, I just don’t wish to see you injured.”_

_“Forge. A crown. For these.”_

_A crown? Mairon brushes his hair back from his forehead. “Forgive me, my lord, I am quite busy, as you can see. I will have one of the apprentices look into it, if it pleases you—”_

_He is not expecting the blow, and it sends him spinning backward to crash into the anvil, hard enough to bruise his fana. Mairon stares up at Melkor, automatically wiping blood from a split lip with one hand. Melkor has never laid a hand on him without asking, but now his blue eyes are distant and forbidding. There is a cold anger in his countenance as he closes his hand about the three shining jewels. “Do you defy me, Lieutenant?”_

_Mairon’s chest constricts with confusion and with fear. “Lord—never—but you have always wanted me to make my thoughts known, and—and—”_

_Melkor’s hand fists in the front of his shirt and drags him to his feet. “If I tell you to forge a crown, you will forge a crown befitting their beauty,” he snarls. “And you will not question me!” Mairon sees his eyes flicker about the forge and light on one of the half-finished swords heating in the fire. “Do you understand?”_

_Mairon does not understand. This is not the master he swore to love and obey. But perhaps it is only that his own words have grown rusty over their long years of separation. Perhaps his wayward thoughts have suffered; perhaps he has not sharpened his wits enough. He tries once more. “Lord, I do not question you, but it has ever been your way to have my freely-given thoughts—”_

_Before he can finish, Melkor has taken hold of the hilt of that half-molten sword, dragged it out of the fire, and then Mairon is screaming as hot agony lances through his right shoulder. He writhes, trying desperately to free himself, but every movement is nothing but more pain. He can hear flesh sizzling, and he sobs, reaching blindly for the hilt of the sword that Melkor has thrust through his shoulder, pinning him to the floor like a specimen pinned to a piece of board._

_The pain is not the worst. The worst is when he looks up and sees no emotion at all in Melkor’s frosty blue eyes, when Melkor takes his chin in one large hand and tips it up. “It is not your left arm, Lieutenant,” Melkor says silkily. “Forge this crown for me and do not defy me again.”—_

Mairon dared not appear during Bilbo’s dreams that night, afraid of what might slip out, but he sent him calm dreams of twilit fields beneath the stars of the First Age, and wind sweeping softly through the meadows.


	12. Part One, Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which one story ends.

If Mairon had hoped for a better ending to Bilbo and Thorin’s tale than his own, he was in some ways sorely disappointed and in some ways a little rewarded. Bilbo fell unconscious as the eagles turned the tide of the Battle of Five Armies in favor of his company, and Mairon was left to watch alone.

He was a silent, powerless witness as goblins surrounded Thorin Oakenshield and his retinue. The two young dwarves—Filí and Kilí, was it? He knew of them largely because Bilbo spoke of them as a fond uncle might speak of his sibling’s children—had thrown themselves in front of Thorin. Even if he could have, Mairon would not have tried to stop them, for they had pledged themselves to him, and it was not in him to take away a pledge of service, but he ached for Bilbo as he watched them fall. Blood on the rocks. Blood on the spears of the orcs.

Thorin fought like a madman, his dark braids whirling, his axe cleaving foe after foe after foe. Mairon was sure he himself was the only one who would give any thought to the orcs, wondering what they were fighting for, what they were dying for. Had they pledged a service? Did they think they were fulfilling it? Were they fighting only for the joy of battle or because they hated dwarves or because—

The sickening thump of metal embedding itself in flesh was his only answer. And here, with his bearer lying like a limp rag, there was absolutely nothing he could do, other than try to make sure Bilbo stayed safe. Yet he didn’t hide himself. Somehow, he felt that if he could do nothing else for the little burglar, he could tell him truthfully what had happened.

It wasn’t pretty. For some time, Mairon had loved battle. In the first skirmishes, he thrilled to his command and to the desire to win praise from his lord. Later on, it was a way to lose himself in a dance of pure skill, testing himself against elf after elf and always, always, coming out victorious—until his disastrous encounter with the warrior maiden and her faithful hound. Now, though, he watched like a wraith as Thorin staggered, as his head swayed lower, as he repelled orc after orc, but each claimed some small part of him, his blood dripping to mingle with his nephews’ blood on the rocks below. Now, Mairon wondered if the history of Arda could be written in anything other than blood.

Thorin was leaning heavily on his axe. He failed to block a spear from a particularly persistent orc, and Mairon winced in empathetic pain as the shaft went through his shoulder. He knew firsthand how painful that was, and Thorin did cry out, though he somehow managed to lift his axe and knock the orc back a pace. Then he went to his knees beside Kilí and Filí, and Mairon saw the grief on his face as his blood trickled down upon them. He had seen the same grief countless times and always turned away for one reason or another. This time he did not turn away, not until he saw the great black bear ripping through the ranks of the orcs to rescue Thorin, and then it was all he could do not to sink into his own memories and sadness. Bilbo might need him.

There was a reconciliation, at least. That was the one part of the tale that had sweetness lacing the bitterness. Thorin did apologize, with Bilbo clutching his hand and murmuring soft words that Mairon avoided listening to. But it was a short conversation, and they were still parted at the end of it, Mairon wishing he knew more about hobbits and dwarves—were they bound for the Halls of Mandos? Was there any way to petition Aulë—no, of course not. Even if there were some way for him to reach the Vala, he had long ago lost any right to speak to him. Mairon sighed and waited for nightfall, wondering if there was any way he could ease the pain, even a little.

~

Bilbo didn’t know what he was expecting that night, but he was not exactly surprised to find himself standing once again in the halls of Erebor, before a great stone construction. Thorin’s likeness stared out with blank eyes; beneath his feet lay the Arkenstone. Fëacormo stood gazing up at it. He wore a black robe and an obsidian circlet upon his red-gold hair, and when he looked at Bilbo, his face was pinched and somber.

“Is this what Thorin’s tomb will look like?” Bilbo asked softly.

“I do not know, though I am sure his kinfolk will make it sufficiently magnificent.” 

“Well,” said Bilbo, putting his hands in his pockets and walking over toward it. “You were quite right about how Thorin would react to what I did with the Arkenstone. I suppose I ought to be grateful that he shook it off before the end.”

“You don’t have to be grateful that you lost someone important to you.”

“No,” Bilbo agreed softly. “Perhaps not.” He looked up at Thorin’s frozen face. “Why could he not trust me? And how—how did you know?”

Fëacormo shut his eyes. “I do not know what to call it—a sickness, perhaps, of the mind. But I have seen it happen before. I…” he took a deep, shuddering breath. “I lost my lord to it.”

“Oh,” Bilbo said. “I am very sorry.”

A soft sigh. “Master burglar, I do not need your sympathy. Not right now.” Fëacormo turned to him; then, abruptly, went down on one knee. “Is there any way I can help you? I would ease your pain if I could.”

Bilbo thought about this for a moment. “Gandalf used to make really excellent fireworks when I was a little faunt. I wonder…could you do something similar?” He wasn’t certain why that was what he asked for, but it would be a nice distraction. Something pretty and showy but ultimately not requiring much from him.

“Fireworks?” Fëacormo smiled. “Master Baggins, your wish is my command.” He spread his hand and the lonely halls of Erebor melted away; Bilbo found himself seated on his favorite lawn chair with his favorite pipe in hand. “I believe I owe you recompense for your hospitality the last time we were here,” Fëacormo said, somewhat mischievously. Then he opened his hand, and Bilbo gasped as trails of light shot upward into the darkened sky, making those whistling bang bang noises that he still remembered so well.

Most of them exploded in showers of sparkling colors, but there were other images as well: two bright lamps, first, with flowers growing around the base, that hung in the air before exploding. Then a whizzing rocket became a tiny green dragon, chased by a tiny red dragon, chased by a tiny blue dragon. There was nothing frightening about them; they simply twined happily around the sky and were gone.

A great red eye opened, lidless, blinked, and then formed into a cheerfully crackling fire. Trees alight with flame sprang up from it, turned green, blossomed, and were gone.

“You do have a knack,” Bilbo said admiringly.

“I have, haven’t I?” Fëacormo replied with satisfaction, sitting beside him on the grass.

After a little while, Bilbo found that he was a little soothed, but he still turned to the wizard, who was watching the sky with a distant look in his eyes. “You say you lost your master to something like what happened to Thorin. Does the pain fade?”

Fëacormo turned and opened his mouth, frowned, bowed his head. “Do you want the truth?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yes, please.”

“For me it never has, and I do not believe it will,” Fëacormo responded after a long moment of silence. “But I am not a Hobbit, nor even a Man nor Elf. For one of your kind, it might, but I do not know. I wish I could give you more comfort.”

“You have given me some excellent fireworks, at least,” Bilbo returned, then, thoughtfully, reached out and patted Fëacormo’s bowed head. “And you have also given me quite the oddest friendship I have ever had the pleasure of being offered.”

He sat back to watch the fireworks.


	13. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo and Gandalf travel homeward and make some new friends.

The end of the adventure was rather troublesome, Mairon thought, and it dragged on rather. He wasn’t entirely sure he was happy about Olórin’s return, either. Well—he was. Olórin had been rather instrumental in ensuring that Master Baggins did not actually get thrown off the side of a mountain. But Mairon was no longer certain he wanted to reveal himself and having Olórin around made him nervous. Bilbo had actually asked if he should tell Olórin about the Ring, and Mairon had—with a great effort—told him that it was up to him. But he hadn’t. It was a little strange, Mairon supposed, but he was grateful all the same.

It took some time for things to get cleaned up. Bilbo was surprised by this. Mairon, who had spent an inordinate amount of time conducting wars and cleaning up after them, was not. Eventually, however, there was nothing left to be done, and Bilbo and Olórin set off towards the Shire with a few ponies and several treasure chests of gold. Mairon could not hide his elation; he wanted to see this comfortable, orderly land he had so far experienced only through Bilbo’s dreams. All the same, he knew it would be some time yet, and he could afford to be patient.

When they set out, Bilbo seemed lonely at first, but Olórin soon began to draw him out. He was, as Mairon had remembered, terribly, terribly kind. He seemed to have an unerring sense of the right thing to say, for which Mairon rather envied him. He hated to admit that someone was better at something than he was, particularly given the situation, but he really had no choice, with how much Olórin always knew when to pull Bilbo out of himself and when not to. 

They had a rather uneventful journey for some time—there was little that would choose to bother both Olórin and Beorn along the edge of Mirkwood. Besides that, although Mairon did not think Bilbo had noticed it, Mirkwood was friendlier now. The Shadow had lifted. Mairon wondered whether Olórin had had something to do with it. Perhaps that was the reason he had abandoned the dwarves and Bilbo outside of Mirkwood the first time. Again, Mairon wondered if he should have revealed himself to Olórin, if helping drive out that Shadow would have gained him something. But then, he would not have made friends with Bilbo. And he wanted to be friends with Bilbo.

It was not until they left Beorn’s house that anything of particular note happened. They were scarce a day’s ride out when the large, purple clouds that Olórin had been eying rolled overhead and promptly disgorged a good mere’s worth of water onto the heads of the travelers. Mairon did not bother to bite back his shout of laughter—since no one could hear him—at the sight of Olórin’s mane of grey hair flattened with water and the way he made an irritable grumbling noise, like a large dog, as he tried to clear the rain from his face.

“This is poor luck,” he told Bilbo, who was gasping and shivering with cold. Mairon tried to warm him, but as usual found that his powers would do little save heat the outside of the Ring a little. Bilbo stuck his hand in his pocket, then yelped loudly and stuck his fingers into his mouth. Sheepishly, Mairon reduced his efforts. Perhaps not ‘a little’ then.

Olórin gave him a look from under those beetling brows. “Master Baggins?”

“Oh, er, stuck myself with a pin,” Bilbo said, with his customary evasiveness where Mairon was concerned. “Dratted dwarf tailoring!”

“Hm,” said Olórin. “Perhaps we had better find shelter, then, if you’ve gotten so clumsy after only a few seconds, Bilbo, my good fellow!”

“Yes,” Bilbo agreed. “Shelter. What an absolutely dreadful downpour.” He looked around somewhat helplessly. “But where on earth are we to find it out here in the wilderness?” he wailed.

“Come, don’t despair,” Olórin said, clapping him heartily on the shoulder. “There’s some smoke off that way. It looks as if it may come from a chimney.”

“It may,” Bilbo agreed, “But I am not sure how much I trust chimneys in the wilderness.”

“Well, well, we may as well see,” Olórin told him.

“I suppose you are right,” Bilbo sighed. “This wretched rain may at any rate prove worse than an ogre or two.”

They made their way in the direction Olórin had indicated and came quite quickly to a small cottage nestled in the trees. It had a chimney that was indeed smoking, and a number of herbs were hanging from the eaves, presumably drying. Or at least they presumably had been drying. Less so, now.

There was a low fence with a little gate in it, covered in a large, climbing vine with sturdy vegetables on it that Mairon thought he recognized. Mushrooms sprouted up from both sides of it, and as Bilbo put a hand on the latch, something from inside raised its head and made a low, growling noise.

“Oh! Oh, that’s a _wolf_!” Bilbo skipped nervously back from the little gate.

_A bitch,_ Mairon thought with interest, stretching out his awareness. _A bitch with pups._ He was suddenly very afraid that either Bilbo or Olórin would do something stupid or cruel.”

“Steady,” Olórin said. “I don’t believe she means us harm.”

“But—” Bilbo squeaked. Mairon could feel his heart pounding. “I—I suppose she must want to protect those little ones,” Bilbo said, a little more softly, and Mairon relaxed slightly.

There was a crack from the bushes behind them, and they both turned to see a tall orc carrying a spear in one hand and a dead rabbit dangling from the other heading towards them. Mairon felt his stomach twist up into a knot again as Bilbo reached for Sting. Olórin seemed a little more undecided, for which Mairon gave him a great deal of credit and not a little thanks.

The orc pushed dripping water out of her eyes and said, in confused Orcish, “Who are you?”

Olórin laid his hand over Bilbo’s arm and described a deep bow. “We are but lost travelers who sought shelter from the storm,” he said—haltingly—but in understandable Orcish as well. Bilbo made a soft little noise but stayed frozen, his hand still clutching at Sting’s hilt.

“Ah, Westron better?” the orc asked, her voice thickly accented but understandable. She shifted the spear slightly, as guarded as Bilbo but clearly defensive and not offensive. Mairon hoped very much that Olórin realized that.

“My companion only speaks Westron,” Olórin responded. “I have but a passing acquaintance with your tongue.”

“I am Salfa. I do not want trouble. This—” she gestured at the cottage. “—my home. Travelers welcome if come in peace.”

“G-G-Gandalf?” Bilbo stammered, but to Mairon’s relief, he released Sting.

“We only wish to dry ourselves and our clothes,” Olórin responded.

Salfa nodded. “Then come in, Man and—” she peered at Bilbo, “—small thing.”

“ _Small thing_?!” Bilbo drew himself up to his full height. “I am Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit of the Shire.”

Salfa chuckled. “Ah—forgive. Small Orc.”

As Bilbo sputtered, she moved past him and leaned over the gate, saying, once again in her own tongue, “Precious queen, calm yourself. They are not here to hurt your children.” She rubbed a hand over the wolf’s head, and the bitch quieted. Mairon, all at once, went sick with longing.

Opening the gate, Salfa beckoned them inside. “Walk slow,” she instructed; the wolf grumbled slightly as they went past, then pricked her ears up, sniffing the air. Mairon wanted to pet her; he wanted to bury his face in her wet fur and lose himself, but he could only stare in hopeless frustration as Bilbo followed the other two into the little cottage.

Salfa paused. “You have to be nice,” she told Bilbo and Olórin sternly. “We give—” she paused, clearly searching for the word, because she said it once in Orcish and then again in Westron “—hospitality. We give hospitality, and you be nice.”

“In accordance with the ancient customs, we will be guests within your hall,” Olórin told her solemnly.

“Good.” She opened the door. “ _Aushnarg, we have guests seeking shelter from the rain._ ”

A more petite orc wearing a delicately embroidered white dress looked up from the fireplace. “Ah—travelers— _what is that small one?_ ” she added in orcish as Salfa herded the two of them inside.

“ _I do not know, except that he dislikes it being commented on and swells up amusingly_.”

“I am Gandalf, and this is Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag-End,” Olórin said, bowing so low that his beard swept the floor and would have left a wet mark if he hadn’t already dripped all over it. 

“Hello, travelers,” Aushnarg said, her Westron even thicker and more accented than Salfa’s. “I—make. I make food.” She looked helplessly at Salfa. “ _Can you tell them that they may have this, and I will make a second batch for us?_ ”

“You have this,” Salfa explained. “She makes us more while you eat.” There wasn’t a great deal of room in the cottage, but she pushed the table back, giving Gandalf and Bilbo better access to the low bench in front of it and began to mutter as she moved several sets of potted plants and spices onto a set of shelves above the fireplace. “ _Aushnarg, this is why we have shelves._ ”

_“Sorry, I was cooking and I got distracted._ ”

“ _As usual_.” Salfa sighed and ruffled Aushnarg’s hair before kissing her cheek tenderly.

The warm fire soon started to dry Bilbo and Olórin off, and Salfa handed them both rough wooden bowls of stew. “You are far off the hammered path,” she commented. “What has bringed you out here?”

“We have been on an adventure,” Bilbo replied. The food had clearly raised his spirits, and Mairon suspected he was loathe to distrust anyone who gave him a delicious meal. “It is largely over now, and Gandalf is kindly escorting me back to my home in the Shire. What about you two? I thought Orcs only liked to kill—er—battle—er—generally.”

“We are warlike folk,” Salfa agreed. “But we like challenges. Living here is challenge for me and Aushnarg.” She chuckled. “Learning Westron too.”

“I’ve known many folk who enjoyed challenges,” Bilbo agreed. “This is delicious, by the way, I am entirely at your service.”

“Aushnarg does not speak Westron well. Can…?” she paused. “I say it for her in our tongue, so she can talk with us?”

“Translate,” Bilbo supplied. “Yes, of course. We don’t mind at all, do we, Gandalf?”

“Indeed not,” Olórin agreed.

“ _Aushnarg, the small one delights in your cooking as always. And they are asking why we are not fighting, so I suppose the small one comes from a race allied with Men._ ”

Aushnarg blushed. “ _Tell them thank you. Here’s yours, love_.” She got another bowl for herself and one for Salfa, then sat in Salfa’s lap to eat.

They ate in silence for a little while, but soon enough Bilbo commented on Aushnarg’s white dress, clearly wondering if the two of them had traded for it; Mairon swelled with a delightful pride when Aushnarg confessed she had sewn it herself. _Truly_ , this one was one of his own. He had never tried such a craft personally, but it was gorgeous, and he could have wept. One of Melkor’s own race creating something away from the harsh necessities of wartime—it had been so long.

Aushnarg served them nutcake after dinner, and then Olórin went outside to watch the rain and think. Bilbo discovered that Salfa had pipeweed and soon enough the two orcs and the burglar were wrapped up in a dim, dreamy haze that Mairon remembered but could no longer really join. 

“I certainly would never have expected to find two such lovely orcs living alone in the wilderness,” Bilbo said, with an effort at gallantry that passed largely unnoticed by the orcs, since Aushnarg’s head was in Salfa’s lap and she was purring.

“Most beautiful woman in Middle Earth,” Salfa agreed, petting Aushnarg’s hair.

“It seems that you are folk like any other,” Bilbo said, sounding a little wistful. “How did the Orcs come to always be fighting with Elves and Men, do you know? Or would you prefer not to talk about it?” he added. Mairon could hear the curiosity in his voice.

“Long, long story,” Salfa responded. “But I will tell if you want.”

“I would love to hear such a story!” Bilbo replied eagerly. “If you would have it so, I would write it down to share with later generations, perhaps.”

“Spread if you like,” Salfa said, scratching Aushnarg’s ears. “I doubt many will listen, but no reason to keep secret.” She sat back a little, and the firelight played along the heavy bones of her face and her dark, liquid eyes. “We were made when no light was in Middle Earth except the stars. It was hard to live. We were made from Elves.”

“Elves, yes, I have heard that,” Bilbo said slowly, but he said nothing more; Mairon supposed he was remembering the old tale of twisting and corruption, when it had not been like that at all.

“Those Elves were afraid of dying. The land was harsh without light—”

The godsforsaken lamps. Mairon sighed. That had probably been Melkor’s worst decision in the First Age, and one that Mairon himself ought to have talked him out of, but he had been hurting and foolish as well. “So they went to the lord in the north and asked him to change them. And he did. So they became his.” Mairon was trembling, at this proof that even a small memory of his master lingered in the land.

“His?” Bilbo squeaked. “Who was this lord in the north?”

Salfa shrugged. In her lap, Aushnarg had begun to snore softly. “Our lord,” she replied. “Tales change later. He went mad or he just got angry. Different stories.”

_He went mad_ , Mairon thought, his heart twisting. _He went mad, and so did I, trying to please him, trying to bring him back._

“Long time we served him, because he made us and saved us. But he vanished long time ago. He fought many wars with Men and Elves, so many Orcs still fight them. Some think he is come back, but me and Aushnarg, we think he is gone.”

_Gone,_ Mairon thought hopelessly, and he began to weep. _Forever banished from Arda to the Void, behind the Door of Night, where I cannot reach him_.

“So you don’t fight anymore?” Bilbo prompted.

“He gave us strength. But he gave us thoughts, too. We make our own choices. We like the woods. They are quiet.”

“And some orcs think that you ought still to be fighting, is that it?”

“Some think he comes back. Some think he was here.” She waved her hand expressively. “Or there. Near. In the dark forest.”

“In Mirkwood?”

She nodded. “But the Shadow has fled.”

Mairon felt a chill run down his spine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Zomburai!


	14. Interlude 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A present and a homecoming

Bilbo and Olórin stayed overnight, and then, to Mairon’s surprise, they stayed for another two nights, with Olórin weaving spells of protection for the little hut and Bilbo mainly annoying everyone with questions. When they left, though, he contrived to hide a little stack of gold pieces among the herbs, where Salfa and Aushnarg would find them but probably well after the travelers had moved on. In the bright sunlight of the third morning, the wolf pups were yipping and playing with one another, tumbling all across their mother’s back and tugging at her ears. Once again, Mairon felt that old all-consuming longing rising up inside him. He wanted to hold one, wanted to pet it, feed it, make it feel safe.

After everything, he did not expect Bilbo to linger by the little animals, to reach out and touch one lightly, but he did. The cub growled playfully and worried at the leather of Bilbo’s boot. “I remember my mother kept dogs,” Bilbo said suddenly, as if he were talking to someone, but there was no one he could be talking to, since Olórin and the two orcs were standing several feet away, Olórin explaining how to keep the protective wards up properly. “I haven’t thought of that in a long time,” Bilbo continued quietly.

Then he took a long, deep breath and circled the pup with both hands, lifting it up. It panted at him, then licked his nose happily. The mother wolf growled, deep in her throat, but she made no move to part them. 

“Pup likes you.” Aushnarg sidled over, wearing another one of her beautiful dresses. This one was made of soft brown cloth and embroidered with little orange leaves. “You want?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Bilbo said automatically. Then he paused. “Could I?”

Aushnarg pressed the pup into his arms. “You take. Sister too. Or sad.” She reached down and picked up another pup, smaller than the first, who had come over to sniff and whine curiously.

“Two wolves,” Bilbo said. “Taking two wolves back to the Shire. Well—I suppose if I take one I must take the other. It would never do for the one to be lonely, now would it?” He bowed deeply, and the pup in his arms wriggled lazily. “Thank you very much, I am quite at your service.”

Aushnarg giggled. “Funny small orc.”

Mairon was too busy bursting with excitement over Bilbo adopting two wolves to give this statement and Bilbo’s resulting indignation the attention they deserved.

~

Though one was a bitch, Bilbo named the wolves Filí and Kilí, because he was softhearted like that. They met many men, a few elves, and one other orc family on their journey back to the Shire. The men and elves were somewhat put off by the rapidly-growing wolves; the orcs were rather put off by the rest of the party, but somehow Bilbo and Olórin always seemed to muddle through.

In the spring, as Filí and Kilí were half grown, paws too big for their lanky legs and growing bodies, they reached, at last, the fabled Shire. It was a part of the world Mairon had never walked upon since he had helped Aulë with its making, and it was much changed. Wheat grew in golden rows along neat little wooden roads, and every farmer seemed to raise a hand in greeting to the little group, “though they’ll all be gossiping about me as soon as I have moved on, I’ll wager,” Bilbo said cynically.

Bright flowers grew in gardens, too, and Mairon wished he had the use of his legs so that he might walk among them. He had not seen such beauty in many a long age, and although he did not regret the old wildness of Utumno and Angband, there was much in him these days that longed for this sort of quieter, brighter order; a place of diminished scope—but as he was beginning to learn from Bilbo, a smaller scope was no cause for disdain.

Indeed, when he saw Bilbo’s wrath at the invasion of his home by the Sackville-Bagginses, Mairon could not help smiling to himself. For once, the little hobbit reminded him of no one so much as Melkor, defending Angband.


	15. Part Two, Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frodo Baggins comes to Bag-End.

It was a bright midsummer day when Frodo Baggins came to live at Bag End. He was still a tween—little more than a child, his relatives would have said if asked. He was a bit of a troublemaker, but more than that, he was queer and fanciful. He fit in well at Brandy Hall, but the folk there whispered worriedly about sending him to Hobbiton. “The folk there are boring and straitlaced,” they murmured.

“Can’t be helped,” Rorimac Brandybuck said. “His uncle wants him there, and what Bilbo Baggins wants, Bilbo Baggins gets. Besides, they’re both Baggins by name but Took by nature. Young Frodo will do all right.”

What Frodo noticed on that bright morning was that as he walked across the bridge over the Brandywine, something seemed to change. The flowers on the Hobbiton side were subtly brighter and subtly bigger; the drone of the bees was louder and busier. Everything seemed just a little bit less wild but also a little bit more real than on the other side of the river. It was something he had half noticed before on the occasional walking trip, but it seemed more evident to him now. Perhaps, he thought, it was how one responded to going home. After all, Brandy Hall was a delightful place to spend a childhood, but it was not really his _home_. There were too many other young Brandybucks racing about and getting into mischief when all he wanted was his own quiet nook or corner in which to think or daydream. He had agreed to live with Bilbo not only because Bilbo had asked him but also because his uncle had promised to teach him to read—and to read and speak Elvish, of all things!

Another thing he had not noticed before was how much brighter and neater things seemed to get as he made his way to Bag End. Frodo had never seen such huge sunflowers as those in his uncle’s garden, and he paused to look at the smooth round stones that lined the outside of the garden bed in some awe. They were polished to the touch, slick as glass beneath his hands. One or two of them were black, hot with sun, and strangely reflective. Bilbo would later tell him that they were obsidian, lava that had once, long ago, bled from the side of a volcano and hardened.

As he lingered in the garden, he heard the sound of someone whistling and looked about him, wondering where it came from. A few moments later, a young hobbit child came around the corner, lugging a huge wheelbarrow that was far too big for him. He could not be more than ten years old, and he had not grown into his feet yet. He stopped when he saw Frodo and gazed at him with huge round eyes from behind a mop of shaggy golden hair.

“And who are you then?” Frodo asked in amusement.

“Samwise, if it please your lordship,” the tiny hobbit squeaked, and Frodo had to laugh.

“I am not your lordship, lad. I am just Frodo—Master Baggins, if you must.”

“Oh!” The tiny hobbit regarded him with wonder and not a small amount of fear. “I’m helping me dad in the gardens, if you please, sir.”

“And I’m on your path? My apologies, young Samwise,” Frodo laughed again, stepping out of his way. “Please, by all means, do not let me keep you from your duties.”

“Thank you kindly!” He went on whistling and Frodo gazed after him in some awe. He thought he himself might have wrestled with that wheelbarrow, but the boy seemed to regard it as of no consequence.

“Well, Master Samwise,” Frodo said to himself, “I see I shall have to keep an eye on you.”

~

Sleep was different at Bag End. Bilbo insisted on tucking him in—as though Frodo were still a faunt!—but as he told him a long tale when he did so, Frodo did not exactly protest. There was, too, a huge grey dog, nearly taller than Bilbo, who lived here.

“That is Filí the Fourth,” Bilbo introduced them. “A good pup. I shall have to see about finding a mate for him soon, for I gave away all the rest of that litter.” Certainly he was very friendly for such a large animal. “I am afraid he likes a bedtime companion,” Bilbo said apologetically. “If you would rather keep him out of your room, I quite understand, but I think the poor thing might be a bit hurt.”

“I’m sure we’ll become friends,” Frodo said, and indeed Filí turned out to make a most comfortable pillow. Perhaps that was why he slipped so quickly and easily from comfortable warmth into dreams and found himself standing outside Bag End once more, with the sky above him dim and lit only with starlight.

He thought at first that he was alone, and that he had walked in his sleep, though he had never done so before, but when he looked about, he saw that there was a shimmer in the air he had never seen awake, and he also saw that he had a companion, striding through the rows of flowers but barely seeming to disturb them in his wake.

He was half a head taller than Frodo himself, and he wore a simple, well-fitted vest and breeches like any respectable hobbit, but he was far more slender. A silver circlet rested upon his sleek head, and long, straight hair of red gold was tied back with a velvet ribbon. There were soft slippers upon his feet, and his pointed ears were adorned with jewelry of a scandalous sort that Frodo had never seen in life but only in picture books of the oldest kinds of Elves.

“So you are Bilbo’s scion,” said the strange elf, as Frodo thought he must be.

“Yes,” he replied. “And who are you?”

“The name that Bilbo knows me by is Fëacormo, and I am a friend.” Fëacormo tossed his head. “I am a maker of things and chiefly what I make these days is guards and wards and sometimes a good harvest.”

Then Frodo wondered if he might be one of the old mythical race of Faeries that were said to have inhabited the lands about long before any hobbit ever set foot in them. “At your service, and your family’s,” he said, in some confusion, but before he could bow Fëacormo had gone to one knee before him.

“No, no,” he said softly. “I do not need your service, for I offer you mine own.”

It was very strange to see him kneeling there with the light of stars glittering off the silver circlet on his brow. “Thank you very much,” Frodo said slowly. “I have no need of anyone’s service yet, you know. I am just a tween.”

Sly red-gold eyes glittered at him. “Do not worry, I will not disturb you again if you do not desire it. I simply meant to welcome Bilbo’s heir.”

“Thank you,” Frodo said, rather helplessly, for he felt he had said something wrong, but did not quite know what it might be.

“You have not offended me,” Fëacormo assured him, getting to his feet again. “It is only that I sometimes lose myself in the past and you have the look about you of an Elf maid I once knew. Lovely as a star, and terrifying—quite terrifying.”

Frodo laughed at that. “I am not in the least terrifying, nor am I lovely,” he said awkwardly, and the other laughed in his turn.

“Have it your way,” he said lightly. “In all likelihood you will never face such trials as she did. Perhaps the age of such dark adventures is over.” He paused, looking pensive. “Perhaps that is not such a bad thing.”

“I should like to know of them, at least,” Frodo said. “I have always loved stories.”

“Well, your uncle will see to that. But if you like sometime I will show you some of the stories that I have seen, for I do love to weave dreams.” He sounded a little wistful. “Not tonight, though. Tonight you may wander as long as you will beneath the twilight and see the places that I protect. But on another night, I will tell you whatever tale your heart desires.”

And then he melted into starlight and was gone, leaving Frodo alone in the dim, quiet field, with the wind singing softly through the long grass.


	16. Part Two, Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon makes one friend and loses another.

Mairon was not certain what he thought of Bilbo’s young heir. He was a quiet hobbit and a thoughtful one, who thrilled to tales of Elves and battles and love stories of long ago. If he lacked a little of Bilbo’s easy courage, well, he was young. It was simply, Mairon thought, that he was somehow harder to talk to—shyer, quieter, less sure of himself. And those huge green-grey eyes always made him flinch, because he had seen such eyes before, blazing with light and anger as he gave ground and gave ground and finally was forced to submit before the Nightingale and her wolfhound. 

It was not exactly that Mairon disliked him. He took a great deal of care, indeed, to ensure that Frodo did not feel any ill will from him. It was more that he did not think he really understood the young hobbit, and that was oddly disappointing, when they were both so very close to Bilbo. He had hoped for another kindred spirit, and Frodo was not that. Instead, Mairon found such a thing in a quite unexpected place, though it was several years after Frodo’s arrival that it happened.

Although the wards he had woven should be protection of a sort at least as far out as the Brandywine and perhaps a little farther, Mairon himself could not really travel outside the Ring and could only appear in the dreams of those who were asleep inside Bag End, which largely meant Bilbo or Frodo, until one day when a small hobbit, barely half-grown and clearly exhausted from his labors, curled up beneath the mantelpiece and fell asleep.

It amused Mairon to enter the boy’s dreams—to see the world of wonder and adventure that Samwise Gamgee’s mind had conjured for him. The flowers were as tall as trees, standing in neat and beautiful rows, and between them were Elves, or the boy’s idea of Elves—beautiful, slim creatures with curling hair like hobbits and ears just slightly pointed at the tip. All of them wore white robes and glimmered like gold in the sun.

The most beautiful of all of them had Frodo’s grey-green eyes, and the little boy went to his knees before him and asked to serve him, to be his knight, and Mairon laughed with the sheer joy of it, the connection, the _understanding_ —Frodo was like a Vala, and Sam was like a Maia, and that was why he had such trouble understanding Frodo. Bilbo—well, Bilbo was different. Bilbo would always be different. But this little boy, asleep with a smudge of dirt on his nose—Mairon thought in the future here would be someone to befriend.

For now, he merely took on the role of an elf courtier—easy enough to change his appearance to suit the dream, though he would not change his hair for anything— _Melkor’s hand sliding through it, mantling it, cupping his face and whispering that his hair was like molten gold reflecting firelight_. But here he could play at being the boy’s friend and confidante, watch him go adventuring with these pretty Elves he had dreamed up, watch him as he still paused to take the time to speak with the flowers.

Sam did not often fall asleep in Bag End. But when he did, his dreams were richer and stranger than any he had ever had before.

~

Time slipped onward. Mairon crafted dreams and protections and thought himself content. Bilbo’s wolves were bred and domesticated; soon many homes in Hobbiton boasted the protection of a friendly wolf, and some of the younger hobbits took to riding them. Frodo learned to read and speak Sindarin, and Sam grew rapidly. Mairon spent time with both of the young hobbits and with Bilbo, playing whatever role they needed or desired. For Frodo, a devoted servant. For Sam, a counselor. For Bilbo—a friend.

Just when he believed there might be healing for himself and for Bilbo, Olórin returned and spoke with the hobbit for long hours. Bilbo became quiet and withdrawn; for a week or more he would barely speak with Mairon. Finally, he came to the point, falling asleep with a book on his chest and his old walking stick in his hand.

“I am leaving,” he said, slowly. He did not look at Mairon.

“Leaving?” Mairon echoed. “Do you mean the Shire?”

“Yes,” Bilbo said. “It is past time I got on with things and let Frodo have Bag End, at any rate. I want to see Elves again. I believe I shall make for Rivendell.”

There was something in his tone that bewildered Mairon. “I will follow you wherever you go,” he said slowly. “But why—”

“You will not,” Bilbo said, looking up then, and Mairon was surprised and hurt to see a flash of hostility in his eyes, though it quickly softened. “You must remain here, to care for Frodo,” he said.

“I do not wish it,” Mairon returned, a little sharply. “I would go with you—you are my dearest friend in this world.”

“Am I?” Bilbo repeated. “Am I indeed?” He lapsed into a thoughtful silence. “I cannot bring you,” he said eventually. “I must leave the Ring behind.” He stumbled over the worlds a little. “Gandalf thinks my plan a sound one, and I—I think I must leave it for Frodo. Yes, for Frodo.”

Mairon started. Never had Bilbo intimated that he knew of the link between Mairon and the Ring.

“Oh, lad, of course I know,” Bilbo said, with a chuckle. “‘Ring-spirit’ you called yourself. You first appeared the night after I took the Ring from Gollum. I’m not a fool.”

“I should not have doubted your cleverness,” Mairon admitted. “It was but a fancy, to take on that name—and I did not know how well-versed you were in Elvish, then.”

“The point is I must—I must—” Bilbo trailed off as if lost in thought, and Mairon frowned, for there was something odd about him, it seemed. A translucency, as if Mairon were the one dreaming and Bilbo the dream. “There is something I must do.” Bilbo shook his head as if to clear it. “I need you to take care of Frodo for me. Will you not do that?”

Mairon looked away. “I do not wish to,” he said in a low voice. He supposed he owed it to Bilbo to explain. “There is a doom laid on the boy, I have felt it. It is a doom like Lúthien Tinúviel’s, and I—I do not wish to have dealings with such a doom ever again.”

Bilbo opened his mouth, as if to try to convince him, but then sighed and simply shook his head. He did not raise the subject again, and Mairon thought it forgotten—thought perhaps it was a whim that had risen and then departed—until he followed Bilbo gayly up the garden path after a beautiful birthday joke and found himself left upon the mantelpiece despite his pleas. The look Olórin cast on Bilbo as he left, and then upon Mairon filled the Maia with a nameless dread that he could not quite understand.

When he was certain that Bilbo had left him behind for good, in his grief and rage, he locked himself away from the world and little was heard of him again for over ten years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we are onto the Lord of the Rings, my friends! thanks so much for continuing to read :3c 
> 
> all your comments and kudos are making me SUPER happy <333


	17. Part Two, Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mairon is very pleased to witness a sweet little drama.

He did not let the protections on the Shire lapse; he simply dreamed sadly of better days, losing himself in memories of Melkor. The first night they had spent together after leaving the other Valar—learning Melkor’s _fana_ , as Melkor learned his. When he had woken, he had been covered in marks and bruises, and he had marveled at every single one, passing his fingers across each tiny indication that he was Melkor’s. Melkor’s precious.

In those early days, they had made so many beautiful things together. Mountains, tall and dark, rising majestically into the sky. Mushrooms, soft and furtive, clinging to life and spreading cleverly through the air. The Orcs—created from Elves at their own behest—the children of Naicelea. Oh, but it had been beautiful.

He woke, blinking, one sunny morning, to find that he felt restless and did not care to sulk anymore. Perhaps he ought to trust Bilbo and Olórin. And even if he had not actually promised in so many words to Bilbo that he would care for Frodo, he felt that he ought to have. “Then I suppose I shall make that oath now—I am sorry I did not make it before,” he said to no one. “I promise to serve Frodo Baggins, to tend to him, and to keep him safe from all harm, in the name of the friendship between myself and Bilbo Baggins, who always showed me a great deal of kindness.”

It appeared he was just in time to witness a little drama unfolding. Mr. Samwise Gamgee was standing in the doorway, and Mairon reproached himself for spending so much time in the past, for the lanky young hobbit had filled out and become a sturdy, fully-grown stammering mess.

As Mairon watched with charmed amusement, he managed to get out, “I—I brought you something, Mr. Frodo.”

“Oh?” Bilbo’s nephew looked up from the book he had been reading with a slight flush on his cheeks. 

“Here you are, sir.” Sam attempted a flourish, and Mairon found himself drawing in his breath sharply as he nearly dropped the little pot he was holding. In the end he did catch it, with some fumbling. A little earth slopped over the side. It was terribly done, but almost charming.

“Why, Sam, what’s this?” Frodo asked, tactfully refraining from commenting on the little pile of dirt now staining Bilbo’s best throw-rug.

“It’s an apple tree,” Sam said shakily. “Just a little one. I potted it for you—I thought as you might like to have them as snacks.”

“It’s lovely.” Frodo got up, setting his book aside and crossing the room to his gardener. “Thank you very much. I shall cherish it.”

Sam turned a maroon color right up to his ears, and Mairon put his chin in his hand and tipped his head to one side. This was the most delightful scene he had had the pleasure of witnessing in years.

“A-A-Anything for you, Mr. Frodo, you just say the word,” Sam managed.

Helpless, hopeless, and head-over-heels. Mairon felt a sudden kinship welling up inside himself. Sam’s master, Frodo, right there, so easy to reach out and touch—he leaned forward in eagerness, hoping that this would go well.

And it did. In a most satisfying turn of events, Frodo reached out one small hand and brushed it across one of Sam’s cheeks, then leaned forward and dropped a quick kiss upon the other. “You’re so good to me, Sam,” he murmured. “I’m truly blessed to have such a—” he paused, and Mairon breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Friend’ there would have been a very unfortunate choice of words, but Frodo made the far superior move of looking down and blushing as he reached out and took the tree.

Mairon’s heart squeezed inside his chest, because—

_There’s wind and rain everywhere, thunder too: this storm is more than just Nienna’s sorrow. Mairon is soaked when he enters Melkor’s quarters and finds the Vala fastening his cloak about his shoulders. “Mairon,” he says in some surprise, and Mairon goes to his knees there on the stone floor, pulling the wrapped bundle from beneath his own cloak._

_“I have brought you a gift,” he says, though he does not—cannot—look up._

_“A gift? Why, you are soaked, Little Flame.” He hears Melkor’s footsteps on the stone, and then he sees Melkor reach out and twine a lock of Mairon’s hair about his fingers. “You came in haste.”_

_“I heard that you were going to leave, and I could not let you. Not without—” He holds it up, both palms flat beneath it. It is so light; Mairon knows with a fierce flaming pride that he has outdone himself._

_“I thought your choice was to remain here in safety,” Melkor says; his voice is neutral, “rather than to brave the wilds of Middle Earth.”_

_“I was wrong,” Mairon says hoarsely. “I was wrong, Master. My place is by your side, ever and always. This is for you, and with it I pledge myself to you, body and soul.”_

_“Then you have indeed brought me a gift,” Melkor says, and his voice is very gentle. He cups Mairon’s cheek with his hand and tips his face up to look at him. “The most precious one I have ever been offered.”_

_“It is—it is only a sword, Master,” Mairon says dumbly, unable to swallow, unable to breathe or remember how any of this form’s bodily functions work. He wonders if there is something wrong, if his spirit is about to somehow break off from his body._

_“I do not mean the sword, Little Flame,” Melkor whispers, and then the lips of his fana are on the lips of Mairon’s, and Mairon does not understand, but they feel so soft and taste so sweet, and then Melkor’s hand is tugging at his hair, and then—_

And then he watched Sam’s face go red as well, and he knew that these two, at least, were going to do quite well.


	18. Part Two, Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam reunites with an old friend. They have some disagreements.

It had been some time since Sam had fallen asleep at Bag End, but he spent the night in Mr. Frodo’s bed, after—after something he could still barely think about, because he could barely believe it. Frodo had been terribly gentle, and Sam had not known that there could be anything quite like the quiet pleasures they had shared. And now he was on a soft bed, with Mr. Frodo drowsing in his arms as the Shire spun into a pleasant, quiet night.

He blinked his eyes, and the room swam a little and then a little more, and then Sam sat up in confusion, because he could hear the heavy thunk-thunk-thunk of a hammer on metal, and a red-gold glow was leaking beneath the door. Frodo was gone from his side, and he realized slowly that this was not the bed he had lain down in, but something much softer and larger, with a shimmering canopy falling down the sides.

“Well, now—what’s all this?” Sam said to himself, in some confusion. He got out of the bed and padded over to the door, pushing it open to find himself in a cheerful, well-lit forge. There was a red-haired person in a leather apron working on something that looked to Sam’s eyes like a slim long rod with a flat, pointed end. He looked up as Sam entered.

“Well met, Master Gamgee,” said a voice Sam thought he had dreamed as a child.

“Mr. Mairon?” he ventured, taking a few more steps into the room. “I thought you were a…a figment, sir.”

“Just Mairon.” The piece of metal Mairon was working on spat sparks. “No, Master Gamgee, I am no figment of your imagination. I am quite real. I’m afraid I haven’t been very sociable of late.”

“And now?”

“I thought I was being a bit stupid.” Clang, clang, clang, went the hammer.

Sam chuckled in a little bemusement. “Well, sir, I suppose I can’t say I’ve never kept to myself at times, though not for as long as you, I reckon.” He supposed he must be dreaming, but he felt lucid in a way he was not quite used to. “So then—if you’re not a figment, as it were, what are you?”

Mairon gave him a slightly bemused smile. “A friend, I think. I am pledged to care for your Mr. Frodo just as you are.”

Sam felt a hot blush of embarrassment spreading across his neck, and he looked down at himself in horror to realize he was still stark naked, just as he had been when he had gone to sleep. Mairon followed his glance and laughed, but somehow Sam didn’t mind it, though he’d have been cross with any of the lads who laughed at him so. 

“Well,” Mairon purred. “Perhaps not _just_ as you are.”

“I,” Sam said helplessly. “That’s,” he tried. “It’s just…”

Mairon laughed again. “Not expecting it, were you?”

Sam shook his head. “It’s like if a dream came true, sir, but I keep feeling I’m bound to wake up out of it.”

“I know what you mean.” Mairon held the metal up to the light. It was nothing but a simple bar, but silver letters shimmered along its length. “There, that should do for now.”

“What is it?” Sam asked, taking a step nearer and then halting again, remembering that he was in his altogether.

“One of the protections around the Shire needed some firming up.” Mairon paused, then frowned a little. “Would you like to see?”

“Magic?” Sam breathed eagerly. “Always, sir.”

“Then come along.” Mairon lifted the iron bar and strode out of the forge. Sam trailed awkwardly after him, thinking he really ought to be wearing something, even if this was a dream of some sort. Mairon glanced back in amusement and waved a hand. “There you are, Sam.”

Sam looked down at himself to find he was in a workaday vest and pair of trousers—ordinary clothes. He was a little surprised, although Mairon wasn’t wearing anything particularly odd himself. But in Sam’s old memories, he could be a bit—fancy.

He led Sam out the door of the forge, and Sam looked about, because there they were on the doorstep of Bag End. It was full dark. The stars had risen, but their dim light would not have been enough to see more than the ghost of his hand in front of his face. A second silvery light seemed to permeate the air, though Sam could not be certain where it originated. Crickets were humming sleepily.

Mairon did not pause but strode forward, and Sam followed after him. The light grew stronger as they went, passing softly along lanes Sam knew as well as his own hand. There were no other lights anywhere, even though Sam knew folk kept lights in their windows sometimes and some folk stayed up to terrible late hours.

After a little while, they came to a high fence Sam had never seen before. It seemed to be made of a shining metal that somehow gleamed with its own light. He imagined mithril must look like this, and it was built up in a quite intricate pattern. “Why, sir, it’s beautiful,” Sam said, then blushed, because he had entirely failed to do it justice. Mairon flashed him a smile and bent over a piece of it that had gone dark.

“Well, thank you, Master Samwise,” he replied cheerfully. “That’s more encouragement than I typically get.” But he did not seem perturbed.

Sam watched him use his tools to carefully pry out the darkened piece and replace it with the new piece he had just wrought. The whole edifice flickered dark for an instant and then brightened, a twining mass of iron reaching towards the sky like a set of silver vines growing up a wall. “There. That should hold.” Mairon laid a hand on it. 

“It’s just like something out of the stories of the elves,” Sam said in a hushed voice, and then he wondered if he had imagined a flash of something like anger in Mairon’s eyes.

~

It seemed to Sam he began to see Mairon very often after that. He never seemed to remember him during the day, but as that was always how dreams were, he did not let it trouble him very greatly. What did trouble him was Gandalf’s return and the talk of dark and deadly things beneath the roof of Bag End. He stayed over with Frodo that night, of course, for his master was very troubled, even if he would not show it—Sam held him in his arms and told him old, pleasant stories that he thought Mr. Bilbo had been the first to teach him. 

When he fell asleep, he found that he was once again in Mairon’s forge, but the roof was open to the sky and there was a fierce storm raging. Mairon himself stood in the center, banging away at some piece of scrap metal, looking as if he wanted to tear off someone’s head.

Sam had several times heard Mr. Bilbo say that discretion was the better part of valor, and it seemed to him this might very well be a time that such a statement applied, but before he could quickly withdraw, Mairon looked up at him. His eyes flashed, and he flung the metal aside. A bolt of lightning lanced down from the sky and hit it with a crackling boom that made Sam twitch and jerk and jump.

“M-Mr. M-Mairon?” he said faintly.

“How dare he!” Mairon raged. “Acting as if the only reason the Shire has remained beneath notice is _luck_!”

He stood, his red hair whirling about him like flames. He was not wearing his usual vest and trousers, nor the more elaborate fantastical robes that he had worn when Sam was young. Instead, he was clad all in dark mail with a sword belted at his side.

“And speaking of destroying the Ring,” Mairon raged. “Why will he not take it up?”

“You mean…you mean Gandalf?” Sam probed hesitantly.

“ _Yes_ , I mean him!” Mairon threw his hands into the air. “If he took it up, I would fight at his side and we would make that dark shadow _cower_!”

“But…you can’t use the Ring for good, can you sir?” Sam wrung his hands. “I mean…it was made of evil, so—”

“ _It was made of love_!” Lightning flashed across the sky again; the ground cracked beneath their feet. Lava erupted from the forge, pluming towards the sky. Mairon took a step towards Sam, and it seemed as if a flaming crown encircled his brow. He was terrible and beautiful, and Sam found he was quaking in his boots.

And then Mairon slumped, the light going out around him in an instant. The fire subsided; the earth turned black. The sky above turned grey, and rain began to fall, quiet and soft. “Oh, Master,” he said, wearily. “Why did they take you from me? I should have died as well. I should have—” He went to his knees and covered his face with his hands. Awkwardly, Sam squatted beside him. 

“Mr. Mairon,” he said. “It seems like you’ve taken an awful burden on yourself.”

“Perhaps,” Mairon said quietly. “But it is my burden to bear, as it always has been, for I failed my master and I will not forswear him. Besides,” he pushed a hand through his soaked red hair, “I have other oaths to keep. And I would see the Ring used to keep those oaths. To keep you and _your_ master from harm.”

“Well, sir,” Sam said awkwardly, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to disagree about that. I can’t very well say no to Mr. Gandalf, and that’s a fact.”

Mairon wiped water out of his eyes and gave Sam a thin-lipped smile. “That is as may be,” he said, and his voice shook only a little, “but I swear to you I will defend you and yours and your Mr. Frodo and your _Mr. Gandalf_ , no matter _what_ the rest of you think about it.”


	19. Part Two, Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam overhears an unexpected conversation and Mairon makes a number of Highly Questionable Decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> art by Zomburai!

The night they spent at Tom Bombadil’s, after all the palaver with those strange trees in the forest, Sam thought he woke in the night to hear the patter of rain, which became the murmur of voices. In some confusion, he got to his feet and went towards the voices. He saw that the other three slept still, easily, their faces awash with moonlight. He passed through the main room and saw nothing of Tom Bombadil, and then he thought he opened the door and saw Mairon and Goldberry standing beside one another, two golden heads misted heavy with rainwater as they spoke together.

“I thought I could stay hidden in that sweet place forever,” Mairon was saying bitterly. “A small place, one where there were no battles or great deeds, but it eased my heart.”

“It is good that you were able to feel the lessening of an old sorrow,” Goldberry said, and Sam thought that her voice was less merry than it had been. There was something of the swiftness of a winter river about it, something strong and cleansing.

“Yet here I am—I, _Mairon_ , the Admirable, who rebelled against Ilúvatar to follow the one who would give me a _choice_ , with all my choices stripped from me, consigned to be a formless ghost, to follow only where the Bearer chooses.”

There was a silence, and presently Goldberry spoke again. “I do not think you are so helpless as you deem,” she said. “Even a frozen river may sometimes choose its own course.”

“I would fight,” Mairon raged, and Sam saw flames wreathing his shoulders. “Olórin would have me carried away and kept in secret, locked away somewhere for all eternity, when I can defeat the Shadow—when I am the _only_ one who can. And yet—I still fear to reveal myself to him. I do not know if it would make any difference.”

Goldberry touched his shoulder, and when he looked down at her, Sam saw that the moonlight was full on her beautiful face, which was kind and young and yet somehow also ancient. Her hair rippled in the wind. “I made a choice long ago, to remain with Tom until the Door of Night is broken and the life of Middle Earth at an end,” she said solemnly. “And I am fortunate in that the choice was not taken from me, as it was taken from you. But I paid a price for it—I cannot any longer change the course of the world about me. No more can your master. But you, I think, still can. And you still have some little time with which to consider. So perhaps do not rush into a choice that you cannot take back, Little Flame.”

Mairon sighed. “I have ever been impulsive,” he murmured. “You caution patience, I think, and I am not even sure that you are wrong.” He looked back and laughed. “And, look, Master Samwise has crept here in his dreamings! Welcome, Master Samwise.” His brown eyes glittered with flame. “Would you take up the Ring?” he asked. “Would you take it up to defend your master?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry, sir, I shouldn’t have been listening,” he said, and he wondered at the brilliant beauty in Mairon’s face. “Me, sir? It’d never come to that, surely?”

Goldberry laid a hand on Mairon’s arm, and he shuddered slightly. “Perhaps Olórin will still find another way,” he said softly. “I should have faith in him this time, but he is not here.” He shook his head. “He is not here.” He gave them both a rueful smile. “You are both friends I never looked for and do not think I particularly deserve, but thank you both, all the same. Come along, Sam, perhaps I can craft you an easy dream—it will be a nice distraction for us both, I think.”

He embraced Goldberry, and they held each other for a long moment before parting. Sam frowned, because it was the sort of embrace you might give a sister, but he couldn’t think how Mairon and Goldberry could possibly be related. But then, he knew little of the ways of wizards and less of whatever Goldberry’s folk might be counted as, so perhaps he was misreading entirely.

He followed Mairon back into the house.

~

“Put on the Ring, damn you!” Mairon raged, fear and desperation driving him. For a moment, Frodo still resisted him, and then he slipped the Ring upon his finger as the Nine advanced. “Now—strike them down!”

But the little hobbit stood still, trembling, staring in fear at the pale crown on the Witch-king’s head. “Strike him!” Mairon cried again, and the Witch-king laughed, though Frodo did not seem to hear.

“This is thy new servant?” he mocked. “Little more than a pitiful child. Thou art but a craven echo of my true master, _ghaashgul_.”

“How dare thou defy me?” Mairon cried, but still Frodo stood and trembled, and Mairon’s voice sounded even to him like the crackling of a dying fire. He had been too long in the Shire, perhaps, or perhaps the Shadow lurking in Mordor really held all of his essence and he was no more himself than a wraith of it. _Perhaps do not rush into a choice you cannot take back, Little Flame_. Only a few nights ago Goldberry had said that to him, and he had listened and nodded and done just that.

He watched in horror as the Witch-king strode forward. To his credit, Frodo tried then, but he did not wield the power of the Ring. He took his own sword and crying out a feeble vengeance, slashed at the Witch-king’s feet. It was not enough, and Mairon’s faltering shout of, “ _Halt_! _I command thee_!” was not enough either, for the Witch-king drove his knife downward and Frodo screamed and screamed and screamed.

~

Sam blinked his eyes shut in the darkness of an unfamiliar forest and opened them in a place that seemed like it had come out of one of Frodo’s old picture books. It was high-roofed and airy, but dark—so dark. It was like some kind of strange heathen temple, Sam thought, looking around at the tall statues of stern-eyed Men—some of whom looked oddly like Aragorn—and surely that great swooping thing at the back where watery starlight poured down was some kind of altar.

And—and was that Mr. Frodo lying atop it, all pale and cold and still? Sam felt his heart leap to his mouth as he hurried forward, and he nearly tripped over Mairon, who was slumped beside it, his red hair shadowed, his face pillowed on one arm. He looked up as Sam approached, and there were great dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked exhausted.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” he murmured. “I’ve tried and tried but I cannot reach him. I fear my touch is only making the nightmares worse.”

Sam bit his lip. If Mairon could not help, perhaps Gandalf would not be able to help either. “Then what can we do, sir?” he asked hopelessly. “Is Mr. Frodo going to die?”

Mairon stood up and stroked Frodo’s forehead gently. “I don’t know,” he said, with a sigh. “I am no healer. I know how to _make_ things; I know how to protect things. But I know nothing of healing,” he finished bitterly, one hand twisting in his dark robes.

Frodo, on the altar, moaned. “Surely you could do something about all this at least?” Sam said, waving his hand. “This can’t be a nice place for my poor master.”

The red-haired wizard blinked and looked around, as if seeing the surroundings for the first time. “I had not realized I had fallen so far into my own mind,” he said, softly. “Yes, of course, we must make this a pleasant place to be, not a tomb.” He waved his hands about his head, and the sky seemed to split open above him, the darkness all about them peeling away until they stood on a high mountaintop in a little bower open to the sunny sky. Green vines climbed up the thin wooden lattices that formed its walls. Frodo lay on a little bed that looked very like his own in Bag End, but he did not stir, and the air about seemed darker; a shadow lay on him despite the sun that Mairon had called down.

Sam sat beside him and took his hand. “Don’t worry, Mr. Frodo, sir,” he said quietly. “I’m here for you.” He thought for a minute and then began to tell Frodo an old story of the elves that Bilbo used to tell him when he was just a little faunt. Probably Frodo knew it as well. It was a simple, silly, sweet story, not like those big battles and burning ships, just a little story about an elf who fell in love with a tree and brought her presents of flowers and water and sunshine in a bottle, and in turn she gave him shade and protection and fruit.

Frodo seemed to rest easier, after a little, though he still did not wake, and the shadow did not lessen. Mairon conjured up sweet music to accompany the story, almost but not quite no more than the soft murmuring of the wind. When the story was done, Sam took Frodo’s cold hand and kissed it and pressed it to his cheek. “I’ll stay with you, master, you have my word,” he murmured, and he did, until a cold grey morning dawned, and Sam blinked his eyes open to see Strider fretting over Mr. Frodo’s pale form.


	20. Part Two, Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mairon sees Bilbo once again.

Days blurred together.Mairon was weary to breaking point with the constant travel and the ache he could feel all too clearly burrowing deeper and deeper into Frodo’s shoulder.He tried again and again to lay his will upon it, but the freezing cold shard of the morgul knife slipped through his fingers like melting ice and would not be stayed, turning always towards Frodo’s heart.

Mairon tried to warn the ranger, using Sam as an intermediary, but the memories slipped away day after day, until he stopped asking because the pain on Sam’s face was too much.It would do no good, in any case.There was nothing Strider could do but ease the pain.Mairon tried to ease it as well and wasn’t certain how well he fared.

It took them long, weary days to reach Rivendell.Mairon spent more and more time in a darkening dream world, trying to keep Frodo from fading.He did not think it was to any of his credit that Frodo did not; there was a strength in him, just like the strength in Bilbo.But no matter how strong the halfling in this, the Morgul blade would not be denied its prey forever.

They could not have reached Elrond a moment too soon.Mairon thought already that it might be too late for his charge, and he feared he would have to face Bilbo and tell him that he had let his anger overcome him once again.That he had lost the thing that Bilbo valued the most.But to his relief, Elrond and Olórin, working through the night, were able to remove the shard of cold steel.Bilbo and Frodo were reunited after all.Frodo even showed Bilbo the Ring—but that made Mairon shudder, for there was such a peculiar, un-Bilbo-like light in his eyes when he did so.

Mairon brooded on it for some time; in the end, he found the strength and the closeness to slip into Bilbo’s dreams that night.He sat by Bilbo’s bed until the old hobbit opened his dreaming eyes.Until he stared into Mairon’s and sat up with a frown knitting its way into his brow.Stood up.Then, to Mairon’s horror, his shoulders sagged, and he turned his back.

“Please don’t turn away from me, old friend.I can’t bear it.”And somehow, Mairon found that he was casting himself to his face before the little hobbit, an intimacy he had previously reserved for Melkor alone.

“Aren’t you what they say you are?” Bilbo mumbled.For a moment, he kept his face resolutely turned away; then he looked back, and Mairon saw troubled sadness clouding his eyes.

He did not want to _lie_ , somehow.Not to a direct question from the only person to have shown him kindness in so long he could barely remember what it had been like before.Besides, he had his pride.He set his chin and looked up.“I’m _more_ than they say I am,” he said stubbornly.“I’m not just a Ring, an instrument of Sauron’s will—I am Mairon, the Admirable, and I _was_ Sauron the Lieutenant of Morgoth in Angband long ago, and _I_ forged the One Ring.”He paused, his shoulders slumping, “Which then entrapped me first of all.”

“Good heavens,” Bilbo said in response, blinking at him.“And you’ve spent the last century collecting dust on my mantelpiece?”

“I—I _like_ the Shire,” Mairon retorted defensively.

“Couldn’t you have, I don’t know, taken it over?Taken _me_ over?”

“I didn’t want to.”He wasn’t sure if he could have, now that he thought about it, but in any case it didn’t matter, because he’d never tried.“It was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.All those flowers in lovely rows, and no one telling you that you couldn’t make the things you wanted to make.”He thought about this.“Except the Sackville-Bagginses, I suppose, but nowhere is perfect.”

“Are you sorry, then?About all the other things you did before?”

From anyone else, Mairon would have scorned the question.From Bilbo, it made him pensive, and he gave it thought.“No,” he said, finally.The elves had been his enemies and his master’s enemies and they had taken Melkor from him.“I am not sorry—except for one thing—” but not even for Bilbo could he say more of that friendship and the ruin of it—and he could not remember most of it in any case, “—but—” he paused, lips trembling at the betrayal they were about to express “—but I wouldn’t do it anymore.The one I did it for has long passed from this world, and now all I want is peace.”He sighed and bowed his head wearily.It wasn’t what the halfling wanted to hear, but he felt that to Bilbo, if no one else, he wanted to give truth.

“Oh, come here,” Bilbo said, after a moment.“That’s good enough, I suppose.Can’t think why everyone is so bothered about repentance instead of actions anyway.And it’s true you’ve never done a thing to hurt me or anyone in the Shire.”

“I would do anything to keep you both safe,” Mairon told him, with perfect truth, then obeyed the summons and, when Bilbo patted his knee, gingerly laid his head in the little hobbit’s lap.

“There, now,” Bilbo said, stroking his hair.“You seem so young, somehow, now, although I can’t even imagine how ancient you must really be.”

His touch warmed Mairon’s heart, and he swore to himself that he would find a way to protect them all without putting Frodo in danger ever again.


	21. Part Two, Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mairon makes more questionable decisions.

This oath proved to be somewhat difficult to keep.Bilbo’s nephew had a horrible propensity for unnecessary self-sacrifice, as Mairon discovered when he shrugged off all of Mairon’s very stern biddings and less stern pleas and said that he would take the Ring to Mordor.The only thing Mairon could think of was to find someone else to take the Ring _from_ him.

And then came Boromir.Mairon had never yet overcome his distaste for the race of Men, but Boromir was rash and joyful and desired nothing more than to be a hero.The Fellowship slept close together and it was simple enough for Mairon to appear to him in his dreams, wearing the guise of a seer sent by his father.

Boromir was eager to listen.He was eager to be a hero.It was child’s play for Mairon to learn of his dream-like vision, and it seemed to him it must have been sent by one of the Valar.It was easy to inflame the boldness in Boromir’s heart and draw out heroism from the boy who had always dreamed of doing great things.He regretted it.

Oh, not immediately.At first, he believed he had chosen well.Boromir protected Frodo.He fought with the rest of the Fellowship.He put himself at risk to see that they were kept safe.And then came the great river and the choice, whether to take the Ring to Mordor or turn towards Minas Tirith.Mairon told Boromir every argument that he should make.He lent him every honeyed phrase and every word he had ever used in the past to convince gods and kings. 

And it was not enough.Frodo would not be swayed.Boromir attacked him.Mairon hid the little hobbit, but he had no idea what else to do.Moments later, he felt the light of Boromir’s soul depart the world.

It seemed to him that he swooned, then.Such a state came upon him as he had not felt since he forged the Iron Crown for Melkor.He seemed to hear and see many things, but all from a great distance.In Mordor his own Shadow stalked and raged, calling for blood and war in the name of his master.Middle Earth would burn for taking him.And something in Mairon answered that call, but he thought of blood and ruin overtaking Bilbo’s quiet Shire and was ashamed.

Upon the Anduin floated the body of bright Boromir, whose greatest crime was only to be as eager as Mairon had asked of him.He had wanted to bear the Ring to Gondor and there stand against the Shadow in the North.Why had Frodo so denied him?Yet Mairon’s first and truest oath was to protect Frodo, so perhaps he should not have inflamed Boromir’s desire but only talked to Frodo and Sam of how to bring him to one who could and would link hands with him and stand against the creature that was now labeled Sauron.It was a much more truthful title these days, he supposed, for he abhorred it as well, the screaming shadow of blood and vengeance that had betrayed him in Númenor.

But who was there?Galadriel or Olórin might have had the strength but neither had the will.Olórin had fallen, besides, and might never again be seen in Middle Earth.Boromir had had the will but not the strength.Mairon found himself grasping at straws; he sat upon the prow of Boromir’s funeral boat and wept as a grey rain fell.Perhaps it was of Nienna’s sending or perhaps the whole world was united in mourning.For Boromir.For Olórin.For Melkor.Mairon wondered suddenly if the Shadow would win, if it would open the Door of Night and Melkor would return, only to cast the rest of the world into darkness forever.

His footsteps took him further afield, or seemed to.He stood in the golden wood of Lorien and watched the lady Galadriel sending word to the sons of Elrond that soon Aragorn would need their aid.He wandered from there back to Rivendell, where the lady Arwen waited and bent to her work. From there he traced the path up to Weathertop, where first his choices had begun to go so wrong.Or perhaps he had never made a good choice and there was no beginning.He went to the Old Forest and saw Goldberry, who smiled at him, and then he went on, for he did not deserve a smile.

Back to the Shire he could not or perhaps would not go; Mordor he could not face.He made his way back to the Anduin again, perching on the bow of Boromir’s ship; it was then, swaying down below the waterfalls, that he saw a young face grooved with old sorrow and recognized in it the unmistakable mark of Boromir’s kin.As he was drawn back towards the Ring against his will, he wondered if the brother of Boromir might be convinced to stand with him, and he wondered, bitterly, if enough of the blood of Númenor remained to make such a stand sufficient.Once, he had thought he would be all that was needed, but that time had passed, what seemed an age ago, when the Ring-wraiths defied him on Weathertop.

His choices were more confused than ever, so he went back to his oath to Bilbo, and he crafted pleasant dreams for Frodo and Sam, and he wondered and waited as he was borne towards the Black Country.


	22. Part Two, Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mairon's resolve crumbles, and he meets once again an old servant.

Mairon had not thought his world could crumble further, but it did—when Gollum finally made a misstep and Frodo and Sam caught him. When Frodo bade him kneel and swear on his _Precious_ that he would not betray them, there was a strange light in those bulbous eyes, and Mairon felt sick to see it.

He still hated Gollum, but that queer flash of light in his eyes—Mairon had seen it before. It was the same queer light that had entered Bilbo’s eyes when Frodo had shown him the Ring. Mairon trembled inside his golden prison. He raged against it once again; he walked its length, again and again, tracing the same worn round path that was all he had left. In the end, he sat miserably, because he was forced to conclude he had seen that selfsame light many ages before. So had Melkor gazed at the Silmarils. This thing that he had wrought, this prison and this weapon—Olórin had been right the whole time. Mairon could not lend strength to his allies, for in the end his touch would only see them all reduced to what Gollum had become: a pathetic, gurgling, twisted creature begging for scraps. Or to what Melkor had become—hollowed out inside and hammering his dearest servant into a new, brittle, painful shape. 

Mairon took a long, shuddering, painful breath and bowed his head. If the touch could warp even Bilbo, who had given up the Arkenstone to save his friends, then there was no other hope. His purpose would align with Sam’s, then: he would tell him so that night. The Ring was to be destroyed, even if what awaited him in the end was oblivion or the Halls of Mandos and all the torments therein.

_I will hold you to that promise_ , he whispered, blinking his outward eyes open again to find Sméagol crouched before Frodo and babbling something. _We will serve the master of the Precious_ , Mairon heard, and it made him flinch and shudder. _But where is my master now?_ he wondered sadly. For all he knew that Gollum meant Frodo, Frodo was not really his master. They were allies. Frodo was _Sam’s_ master, and Mairon’s—Mairon’s was shut out of creation for all eternity, an impassable firmament laid between them. Would Melkor even still want him?

Mairon bowed his head and wept.

~

Sam did not know when he had last slept. It had been a long time, of that he was certain, but the weary dim light of the sun in the misty marshes was not much brighter than the weary dim light of the moon, and Gollum complained continuously about both, his incessant hissing and muttering only fading out when the corpse candles flickered to light and the rest of the world grew so murky and strange and dark that Sam felt he was walking through a queer dream.

The strangest part about it was the feeling that there was someone else with them. Several times he looked up to see an odd shadow hanging near Frodo’s shoulders. As the wavering shadows progressed into darkness, it became less of a shadow and more of an outline of light, a strangely familiar one. Sam’s thoughts were all of a muddle. He thought it had the height of a Man, but it was stooped with one arm beneath and across Frodo’s lower back.

“I ought to be the one doing that,” Sam complained to Mairon.

“Let me help your master. I am not as weary as you are.” The whiteness of his face, the hollowness of the darkness shading beneath his eyes belied the statement. Sam gave him an accusatory look. “Very well, I am, but I have more strength than you even now.” He tossed his head, and his long, red-gold hair shimmered in the light of the corpse candles. “Master Samwise. I will not quarrel with you any longer. The Ring will be destroyed. Do not worry.”

“You sure changed your tune right fast,” Sam grumbled, though his heart seemed much lightened when he heard those words.

“I had a shock,” Mairon told him grimly. “I thought as Boromir, as you know, and now I am finally convinced that Olórin had the right of it. Gandalf, you know.”

“Gandalf is always right,” Sam told him sturdily. “You ought to know that by now.”

“I don’t like being wrong,” Mairon flashed back at him.

They walked a while in silence, before the wizard spoke again, softly, half—Sam suspected—to himself. “Perhaps somehow at the end of this I will see him again.”

“Your master?”

“That’s right.”

Sam sped up a few footsteps and put his own arm about Frodo’s waist as well. Frodo’s white face looked up, and he gave Sam a weary smile that still thrilled him to the core. “Were things—” Sam looked enquiringly over at Mairon, a strange certainty flaring in his chest. “Were things between you and your master the way things are between me and Mister Frodo, sir?”

A noise halfway between a laugh and a sob came out of Mairon’s mouth. “Exactly like, Sam. So—so very like. I am so sorry that your Mister Frodo has this burden to bear.”

“Well—that’s not your fault, sir.”

Another laugh. “Oh, believe me, Master Samwise, it absolutely is.”

Before Sam could try to make sense of this queer statement, a horrible shriek rent the air. “Down!” cried Mairon. “On your lives, _down_!” Sam dropped to his face, pulling Frodo down with him, pressing his hands over Frodo’s ears. The other hobbit was shaking terribly. Sam did not know where Gollum had gotten to, but Mairon he could see clearly now, a shining figure of light. Sam wanted to tell him to hide as well, for he was bright as a beacon—there was no way any creature could fail to see him. But he did not; he drew himself up with such a light shining about him that Sam was reminded of Galadriel, except that there was something strangely like crackling firelight about this light. Mairon spread his arms, and a pool of light ringed both the hobbits. “Go away, foul creature!” he cried. “You cannot oppose me. You were given form beneath my power and _I COMMAND THEE_.” Something seemed to happen then that Sam could not see. He had felt such things before. For some reason, he thought of Gandalf alone on the Bridge of Moria defying the Balrog. There had been a great deal to see then, but he thought that there had also been something he had not seen, and he had the same sense now, of a battle invisibly fought as much as visibly.

There was a great surge of white light that blinded him, and the Nazgul shrieked again as if in pain. Then it was gone, and Sam was lying on the ground with Frodo. “It’s all right, Master Frodo,” he murmured. “It’s gone now. It’s gone.”

“Yes,” Frodo said. “Yes, it’s gone, Sam, yes—” And he took Sam’s cold hands and pressed them to his face, trailing little kisses up the wrists. He was breathing heavily. After a moment, he levered himself up wearily. “Where is Gollum?” he asked, and they both heard the pathetic creature’s mewling wails in the suffocating dark. But the moon had risen and the corpse candles had winked out, and if Sam had the funniest feeling there had been someone else here, it was probably only another trick of these cursed lands.


	23. Part Two, Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mairon encounters the remaining son of Denethor.

It had been a long time since Frodo opened his eyes to see the red-haired wizard who used to weave stories out of his dreams. But here, at the edge of the dead wastes of Mordor, Fëacormo had returned. He was standing in front of Frodo, looking out across the grey-ash landscape. He no longer wore the clothes that Frodo had become accustomed to seeing him in, the simple vests and trousers that were typical vestments in the Shire. Instead, he was wearing a white tunic, belted with a golden chain, and with a golden circlet on his hair. It reminded Frodo eerily of the clothing his friends had been given in the Barrow-downs.

“Why are you here?” he asked. “I have not seen you since before this quest began. I had begun to think you were but a figment of my imagination.”

Fëacormo turned to him; his brown eyes were dull and weary, and only embers flickered in them, but he favored Frodo with a smile. “I thought we might have rather a difference of opinion, and I did not wish to burden you with it,” he responded. “It is all right, though; I have been convinced otherwise.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Fëacormo got a far-off look in his eyes. “It is only that I thought as Boromir did and have changed my mind,” he said, with a shuddering breath.

“I did not know that it was possible to come to wish to d-destroy the Ring when one has spent so long with it close by,” Frodo said, hating the way his voice shook at the mere mention of the Ring’s destruction.

“I am not subject to the beauty of the Ring,” Fëacormo told him. “It has bound me, yes—” an admission Frodo had never heard from him, “—but it has no power to ensnare me.”

“Then you are more powerful than Gandalf, even,” Frodo said, puzzled, and Fëacormo laughed.

“Once, I would have agreed with you,” he said. “No, Frodo, it is only this one peculiarity of mine. Do not concern yourself with it. I have not come to add to your burden, but to lessen it. I wish to show you what Mordor will look like when you have completed your quest.”

Slightly heartened by Fëacormo’s evident faith that the quest _would_ be completed, Frodo nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “I have missed the dreams you sent me.”

Fëacormo gave him a serious nod, then spread his hands apart as if casting something from them. Rippling grass spread across the dead landscape; wildflowers and spiky gorse and heather bloomed as far as the eye could see. Tall, dark pines appeared on the mountains on the horizon, and the haze cleared from the sky. A hawk wheeled overhead, crying to the distance. “It will never be a luxurious beauty like the Shire’s,” Fëacormo said quietly, “But I think it will be a kind of beauty, all the same.”

“It is beautiful,” Frodo agreed softly. He was not sure he could have believed that Mordor could hold the potential for this fairness within it unless he had seen it himself. “May I explore it?”

“Please,” Fëacormo told him. “Rest well this night. You need it.”

“Thank you,” Frodo said again, and of a sudden he took Fëacormo’s hand and entwined their fingers. “This is an unlooked-for kindness, and one that I was in great need of.”

The wizard stooped and kissed his forehead gently. “It is no more than you deserve,” he said softly, and then he was gone, leaving Frodo alone in the quiet wonder of this place.

~

Twice more the Nazgúl came; twice more Mairon defied them, but it was weary work. The true desolation of the place that had once been strong and full of life was pulling at him, and he thought he was nearly as exhausted and hopeless as the two hobbits. For once in his life, he was thankful for the intervention of Men, when the hobbits were found by Faramir, the son of Denethor and brother of Boromir. They needed the rest, Mairon knew, and he needed the rest, and he could see in Faramir’s heart that he would not harm them.

Henneth Annûn was a place that seemed clean and unbefouled by evil touches. Mairon left the two hobbits to sleep and slipped instead into the dreams of the one who had brought them here. Faramir had not thought that he would sleep, but sleep had claimed him all the same, and now he dreamed of the white towers of Gondor, but the city was all empty and green vines threaded through her walls and ate away at what remained. Mairon found Faramir weeping on the top of the wall, staring down at a great funeral pyre whose ashes reached to the sky.

“Hail, Faramir, son of Denethor,” he murmured, and Faramir turned to look at him with eyes that were full of sorrow and too old for his young face. Mairon wondered what he saw.

“Hail,” he replied simply, one hand reaching for a sword that did not exist in this dream.

“Once, I would have asked for your aid, but now I come only to give thanks that you did not try to provide it.” Mairon sighed, looking out across the beauty of the white city that Faramir saw in his dreams.

“Who are you?” Faramir asked, and his voice was low, and it trembled a little.

Once, Mairon would have lied, even in dreams. Now he was very weary, and he did not. “I was called the Admirable a long time since. A smith of Aulë’s. But I would fain make my own choices and so I became known as the Abhorred.” Faramir recoiled at that, and Mairon smiled at him, sly and sideways. “Fear not. I am not he who governs the land of shadow. Not anymore. For a long time I have been bound to a prison of my own making.”

“The Ring,” breathed Faramir. “You are in the Ring.”

“Aye, and I have begun to learn that making one’s one choices is all very well and good, but bitter are the dregs when those choices fail to satisfy.” He sighed. “I wanted the freedom, but I did not think of the responsibility. And truly, it was good, long, long ago, before the—the Silmarils came to be.” The cursed Silmarils. He bowed his head, and then he knelt to Faramir. “I have come also to apologize to you and see if there is aught I can do. It is my fault that Boromir fell.”

Faramir blanched, and his fingers caught at the crumbling stone before him. Then he laughed, sharp and short. “You, the Lord of the Ring, come to ask for what—forgiveness?”

“No.” Mairon shook his head. “I would never presume so far. I doubt there is much that is within my power to mend, any longer, but I will do what I can. I will aid the Ring-bearer to the best of my ability. If you would take satisfaction from me, though, you may do so. You cannot truly kill me in a dream, but…” He trailed off, very determinedly not thinking of all the unpleasantness that might be meted out within a dream. For to Mairon, it was not a dream; he would recall whatever happened here with perfect clarity.

Faramir sighed and leaned forward, resting his chin in his hand. “Why did Boromir die?” he asked softly.

“Why?” Mairon’s lip curled with bitterness. “Because Ilúvatar gave death to all men.” Then he sighed as well and ran a hand through his long, red hair. “Because he wanted to be a hero. Because I told him I could help him become one. Because I thought I could, that together we could save the world and protect Frodo from this burden. I was wrong.”

The other man smiled a little at that. “He was always a hero. I have always been in his shadow but I never minded it because it was comfortable there.” He shook his head. “I do not want satisfaction from you, Sauron. Only your pledge that you will truly try your best to see that the Ring is destroyed.”

“Yes,” Mairon agreed, though to speak that aloud made him feel weak, craven and miserable. “You are not the first I have pledged this to, but I will make the oath once more.”

“I am glad to know it, and I am glad to hear it.” Faramir looked away again, staring out across the grasslands in the front of Gondor to where darkness boiled in the east.


	24. Part Two, Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party reaches Minas Ithil.
> 
> Absolutely no one has a good time.

They had been traveling for too long again, terrified and quiet, ever since they had left Faramir’s men. Ever since the last gleam of sunlight that they had seen at the Cross-roads, the world about them had got dimmer and dimmer, and now, Sam was sure, they were in a very terrible place indeed. Somehow, he suspected the peril was greater here than at any other point in their journey, but he could not say why.

The Tower that Sam remembered had once been called Minas Ithil was a beacon of strange, sickly light against the hill, and in its pallid, unearthly gleam, Sam could see Mairon standing behind Frodo. The light washed the red from his hair and left him colorless, like a lonely ghost. He still wore white, as he had ever since they had left the Dead Marshes, but he looked far more weary than he had in Sam’s dreams even at Henneth Annûn.

“Do you think,” he said, and his voice was strange, very strange, like Mr. Frodo’s voice when it muttered sometimes during his dreams, “that I could make it beautiful again?”

He stretched out a hand towards the tower; Frodo shivered and stumbled in the direction he indicated. Sam and Gollum had to catch him and turn him away, for he was mumbling to himself as well. “Let us go,” Mairon said, and his words seemed honey-sweet and reasonable, for all that Sam knew somehow that they weren’t. It was like being trapped in a nightmare. “Let us go, I want to make it beautiful again. If I cannot have Him, I will rule in His stead, and perhaps He will be proud of me—” He was almost mumbling, and his eyes were dark, almost black.

“No, no, sir,” Sam said. “Mr. Frodo, not that way. Mr. Mairon, sir, no, you’re not thinking straight.”

Those dull black eyes turned on him; Mairon looked very terrible, with his hair flat and somehow lackluster, a sickly greenish-yellow.

“Am I not?” asked the apparition. He turned his eyes upon Gollum. “What would you, foul creature?” But Gollum only gibbered and whined to himself and was no use at all.

Somehow, Sam managed to get Frodo and Mairon both to stumble in the direction they were supposed to go, though Mairon would keep casting those longing glances back to the great tower. “I could make it better,” he whispered again.

“No, that’s the Ring getting to you,” Sam told him. “You don’t want to let it get to you now, not when we’ve come so far.” For some reason, Mairon seemed to find this very funny: he laughed, a high, queer laugh, but his eyes stayed flat and dead. Still, he followed, and that was the main thing, and Sam thought they might really be able to go on past here and get somewhere less horrible, less sorcerous.

And then of course there was a nasty peal of thunder—not the good kind that you got before a storm, but the ugly kind that Sam was learning to associate with the doings of very evil sorcerers—and all of them had to throw themselves against the ground as the hosts of Mordor marched towards the entrance. _And here I thought we came all this way to avoid notice_ , Sam thought to himself, because this was a right disaster—with both Frodo and Mairon half out of their heads and only poor Sam left to keep them steady. 

A chill fell on his heart as he saw the great rider at the head of the host, for he recognized the formless dark bundle, and it seemed to him that it looked right across the wastes, past the three cowering figures, and on to Mairon, who still stood, lone and white.

And it seemed to Sam that the Witch-king spoke then and what he said was, “My Lord, I call to you. I am yours; you owe me obligation as Ring-giver to his greatest servant. Come to me now.” And Mairon stood, mute and trembling, while Frodo beneath him raised his head.

It was all going so wrong. Sam didn’t know what to do, but he must do something. He wriggled forward. “Mr. Frodo,” he said. “Can’t you do nothing to help him?”

He did not know if Frodo heard him, but in that moment the Ring-bearer’s hand reached up and something in his clothes glimmered with a pure, clear light that sent a little white beam up and into Mairon’s eyes. The wizard shuddered and shut his eyes, but when he opened them, Sam saw that there was a tiny glint of red in their depths. “Begone,” he whispered.

“ _I call to you_!”

Mairon’s eyes flared with flame, then; red flickered even in his washed-out hair. “And I say unto thee, Angmar, Lord of Carrion, Captain of Despair, who cowered before Gorthaur and gave thyself to him, that thou hast no right to demand of me a boon when thou serveth a Shadow lord who is but an empty shell of me! And I further lay upon thee this geas: that thou wilt speak of my presence here to none, and that thou wilt now pass from my sight ere I lay my wrath upon thee, treacherous servant!”

Sam stared at him and was once again reminded of Gandalf upon the bridge of Khazad Dum. But he was not of that pure white light himself; even more than the last time, he was suddenly like a pillar of bright flame that might consume everything it touched. The Dark Rider bowed its head and then turned suddenly and rode away, and Mairon slumped to the ground. “Quickly,” he said to Sam. “We must away ere I lose what little resolve I retain.”

“Thank you,” Sam told him solemnly, and those red eyes looked up at him. For an instant, they were the dumb pained eyes of an animal caught in a trap it could find no escape from, and then he looked away, and Sam wondered at what he had seen.

“Come along,” Mairon told him roughly, and he turned to waken Frodo, who still lay as one in a swoon.


	25. Part Two, Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She comes.

Mairon was unutterably weary by now. He told himself that at least he was not walking, as the halflings were, but seeing what had become of this place unnerved and exhausted him. It was like the Orcs: it had never been beautiful, as the Elves were, but it had been full of things forcing a living from a difficult land. At least it had been long ago. How much of this blight had come upon the land while he worked to free Melkor from the Silmarils’ grasp and failed? He could not be sure, now.

The halflings slept at the top of the stair, but Mairon did not enter their dreams. He was ill at ease; there was something familiar about the foulness around this place. It made him afraid, but he could not decide what it was, could not bring it to mind. He had spent too long whittling away time in the beautiful safety of the Shire, and his mind was very muddled by his experiences outside Minas Morgul.

But Sam and Frodo slept—Frodo with his head in Sam’s lap—and someone must keep a watch, so he did, staring out across the dark, barren landscape and waiting. It was a long time later, he thought, when Gollum returned, creeping and crawling up the dark landscape.

“You can see me, can you not?” Mairon asked as he approached, as those pale, lamp-like eyes wandered across his form. “I thought as much when we were taken by the men of Gondor. You responded to my warning when the other two did not.”

Gollum only crouched before him and did not speak.

“Do you know who I am?” Mairon asked. God, he hated the foul thing, and the way it had touched him with its slimy hands in that horrible darkness, beneath the mountain.

“You are the Precious,” it croaked. “My beautiful, beautiful Precious.”

Mairon shuddered. Those hideous eyes. But he had made Sméagol look upon the memory of a Silmaril, and though he had not intended it, perhaps that was how he had snared the unhappy creature. Or perhaps it was truly his very essence. “Then,” he said, “as—as your Precious—” saying the words made him feel so ill, so violated, “—will you not watch over these two and see that they come to no harm?”

Gollum’s eyes slid from Mairon to Frodo, and a kind of wistfulness lighted in his eyes. “I remembers, Precious,” he whispered slowly, “the time under the sun and a girl. I slept with my head in her lap, too.”

“There is something wicked and old and dangerous here, isn’t there?” Mairon wheedled. “Tell me—tell them. You do not want your master to die. Believe me.”

The ancient creature looked at him, caught between sullenness and some other emotion—fear, perhaps, or even tenderness. Mairon hoped it was for Frodo.

“What does Precious mean by that, we wonders?” Gollum crooned slyly.

“I lost my Master,” Mairon told him. “I lost Him long ago, and it has turned me inside out and killed me.”

He was a little surprised to see Gollum’s response—he pulled himself into a cross-legged position and stared hard at Mairon. “Tell ussss,” he hissed. “Yes, tell us the story, Precious.”

“He was the greatest of all the Valar,” Mairon said, and he was weeping again, as he always did when he thought of Melkor. “He was great, and He was terrible, and He gave me choices as no one else ever did, before or since. But He was also tender and beautiful.” _Melkor, lying naked amid the furs the first night He bedded Mairon, His black hair spilling across them in counterpoint to His pale skin and those blue eyes that could be hard like diamond or soft like a bluebird’s feathers._

Gollum was stretching out a hand to Frodo, and there was a look upon his face Mairon had never seen before. “Please,” he said softly. “Your Precious is asking you.”

“There is—” Gollum began, and then Sam woke, and the moment was lost.

~

They were deep, deep in the belly of the darkness when Mairon finally realized what that old sour odor was, rank and foul, like bile spilling from a sliced belly wound. The old fear froze him almost utterly; he could not think; he did not know what to do. Frodo and Sam would die, and he would be left here in this thick darkness for all eternity while Middle Earth succumbed to a slow poison. How had he not _guessed_?

_Cirith Ungol._ It was in the name. Mairon cursed himself for three times a fool. How had _none_ of them seen it? He had thought it was a simple way of saying a place was ill-omened; when they had come up that narrow stair he had thought, perhaps, it referred to how difficult it was to climb, but no. Some ancient Elf had named it true, and not one of them—not Frodo, who had learned Sindarin with Bilbo, not Faramir, whose mothertongue it was, not Mairon, who had shaped those words on his tongue as they were first coming into being—not any of them had thought: well, if it is called _Ungol’s Cleft_ , perhaps there is some spawn of that Great Spider dwelling near it?

And the hobbits had _just slept_. They were both awake and fearful, and there was no way Mairon could reach them through their dreams. Tugging on the Ring might make Frodo more alert, but there was no way to communicate what he had just realized. Gollum had vanished, Mairon realized, as he had always intended to do.

Even now, he heard the creature stirring. The halflings did as well, and they turned, linking hands, afraid but determined. They had both realized it was a trap as well, at the least, but all of them too late, far too late. There was only one small crumb of comfort, and it was that it could not be Ungoliant Herself. Such a monstrous thing as She could not possibly still exist and even if She could, She would never have fit in these tunnels. Huge this thing might be, but it could only be one of Her great spawn. And if it dwelt in darkness, it might yet have a weakness that Ungoliant had not. She had killed the trees of Valinor and tried to consume the Silmarils, but all other things that dwelt in such thick darkness could not withstand the purity of light.

And the glimpse Mairon had had of the star-glass told him that it was no such thing as the Silmarils. It did not ensnare, as they did, for it was a reflection whose light shone freely and purely; of all bright and terrible beauty he had seen it had awakened the least covetous spirit. And perhaps it was Galadriel who had made it so—Galadriel, who had sworn no oath, who had always been the wisest of the Noldor.

He heard Sam invoke a name he did not know, but he felt it when Sam’s mind reached out for a bright memory, and it was difficult, and it was painful to stretch himself thus beyond the confines of his little prison, but he had no choice—no choice at all. And strangely enough, there was a hand, he felt, outstretched for his, but if it was Galadriel’s or if it was another’s, Mairon could not tell. All he knew was that with shaking limbs he managed to reach out and pull Sam’s memory of Galadriel to the front of his mind, and Sam cried to Frodo of the Star-glass, and Mairon held himself to consciousness by sheer force of will.

Almost, they might have been saved. If Frodo had taken more care. If Mairon had been able to tell him the full terror of the creature they faced. Frodo ran ahead; Sam was caught behind, Mairon did not know how or why. The spider came upon them, and Mairon heard Frodo’s cry as her stinger pierced his neck. A terrible scream: the same scream that had brought to Melkor in his last hour of need Mairon and the Balrogs to defend him from Ungoliant. But there was no help for Frodo, and he fell.

Mairon tried to shield him, but the spider had no knowledge of the Ring or the Ring-world, and she saw him not. He called for help, but there was no one to hear, and the spider began to wrap her prey in her sticky web. And then Sam was there, with Sting in his hand, Frodo’s last defender. Mairon watched in true astonishment as the little halfling first fended her off and then, in standing firm beneath her, imparted on her a most grievous injury. It was the single greatest act of bravery and devotion Mairon had seen since he fought with Lúthien. Yet still it was not enough, for still the spider readied herself to tear Sam apart.

“The Star-Glass!” Mairon cried, and by some miracle, Sam seemed to hear him, for he drew it out. And then for the first time in his long existence, Mairon cried in desperation to Varda—not Manwë, never Manwë, but Varda had been kind, once—begging for her help in a rhyme he had heard from the Elves, and Sam cried with him. The Phial flared as white as a little sun, but it did not pierce Mairon nor Sam but only the vast spider before them, and she cringed from it and turned and ran. And then Mairon and Sam were alone with Frodo.

It was horrible to watch Sam’s grief as he bent over the body of his lover and his master. Mairon could not comfort him. Mairon could do nothing but wail his own grief, that caught at him and pulled him backwards to his own loss.

_“Master!” Mairon flings himself forward. “Let me go in your stead! I will be your champion, and you can escape through the passages beneath Utumno!”_

_“No,” his master tells him grimly. “There is no escape for me that way.”_

_“There is—I will wear your armor, and the Valar will not know—”_

_“You would die, Little Flame.” Melkor takes his hands and brings them to his mouth and kisses them, over and over and over. “What kind of a master would I be if I allowed that?”_

_There is water on Mairon’s cheeks, too much and too fluid to be the blood trickling stubbornly from the cut above one eye. It cannot be raining down here. “I will not see you sacrifice yourself!” he rages. “I am your lieutenant—you must listen to me—you must!”_

_“Gothmog!” roars Melkor, and the lord of the balrogs steps forward._

_“Punish me for disobedience if you will,” snarls Mairon, though Melkor has never once done so, for his plans are always immaculate and Melkor trusts him, truly, deeply: he knows this as he knows the perfect temperature to temper steel. “I will not let you go!”_

_“I will not punish you for disobedience, Lieutenant,” Melkor tells him, and then those hands on his hands become bands of iron around his wrists, and then he is flung backwards, staggering into Gothmog behind him. “Hold him!” Melkor commands, and Gothmog twists Mairon’s arm behind his back, pinning him in place. “I will not punish you for disobedience, because for once in your life I will have your obedience, if not by your will then by mine own.”_

_“No!” Mairon screams, tugging against Gothmog, but the balrog’s grip is like iron._

_“Goodbye, precious,” Melkor says softly, rubbing his thumb across Mairon’s cheek so that he sags in shock. “I am sorry I have brought you to tears.” Then, to Gothmog, “See that he’s safe.”_

_“Yes, my lord.”_

_“No!” Mairon cries again. “No—Melkor—master—please—”_

_Melkor casts one last long look at him, and then he turns and strides from the underground chamber._


	26. Part Two, Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam and Mairon rescue Frodo, and Mairon remembers the last time his master comforted him.

It was a long time before either Mairon or Sam surfaced from the corridors of their mind, and it was Mairon who awoke first, so he found himself beside Sam. They were back in Rivendell, the two of them, and Frodo lay white upon his bed with the Ring upon his chest and his eyes shut.

“Oh, Master,” Sam said. “Oh, Master. How’d it come to this?”

“There was a doom laid on him,” said Mairon heavily. “A doom like that of Lúthien Tinúviel, but I never thought it would find him so soon, with his quest only half-finished.”

Sam turned to him then, and he burst into tears and sobbed into Mairon’s chest. Mairon froze with shock for a moment, and then he put his arms about him and held him as he used to hold Melkor, in the early days. “Oh, Sam,” he said, tiredly. “Oh, Sam, I am so sorry for all of this. It is not your burden to bear, nor was it his.”

“Someone’s got to do it, sir,” Sam mumbled, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands.

“It’s my burden,” Mairon said, so soft he could barely be heard. “Mine, but I cannot bear it; I lost that ability long ago.” In all his rage and grief, he had done nothing but make others bear the same loss. It was cruel. He was cruel. The world was cruel as well. “I will face the Halls of Mandos,” he whispered, “and the torments that await me there, but I would go now, if only I could give you back your Frodo.”

_Oh, Melkor, Melkor, why didst thou leave me?_ The keening wail in his soul would never end, and now Sam was to bear this wound as well.

“I’m just glad I’m not alone,” Sam said to him, and he did not know if Sam knew, or if Sam had heard him. “I don’t think I could do it if I was alone. Even when I think I am, when I can’t remember you, it’s still like there’s someone else there.” Mairon trembled, for he did not deserve the thanks, but he would not gainsay it, for Sam must have what comfort he could provide.

“I will not leave you,” he said heavily. “Not until the very end. But now you must go back, and you must go on.”

“You’ve got the right of it, and that’s for sure,” Sam agreed. “I will go back and somehow I _must_ go on, though I don’t rightly know how I can.”

“You can,” Mairon told him. “All hobbits have a strength to them, as Olórin has said many times, but you have more even than most, I deem.”

“I hope you’re right, sir,” Sam said, and with that he woke.

It was not very long after that when they realized their mistake but were still too late to stop Frodo from being taken by the Orcs of the tower. Sam had clearly decided he must make it in to save Frodo by hell or by high water, and Mairon did not disagree with him, but for once he felt he might be of more aid than flitting at Sam’s shoulder like a wraith.

For the towers were steeped with Sauron’s power; while Mairon still must be anchored and tethered to the Ring, he could feel the hold of it loosening, like a leash loosened and grown long by the work of wind and water. It would not be for long, and he judged that any danger that Sam could not overcome himself would call him back, for his awareness could not wholly leave behind the Ring.

So for the first time in a long time, in full command of his mind and his powers, Mairon walked abroad within a place that had once been known to him or at least to some Shadow of him. He saw the Orcs who stayed within: here guarding the border of Mordor there were none like Aushnarg or Salfa among them. These, perhaps, did not even remember the Oath of Naicelea, but stayed to loot and pillage and grow rich for no reason other than greed.

They rotated shifts, and enough of them were sleeping now for his purpose. Clad in shimmering raiment and with jewels laid in his burnished hair, Mairon walked among them, murmuring to them of hidden riches kept from them. Gold-fever he knew how to impart—a word, a brush of fingers, a scatter of imagined gems laid before them. He knelt before their leader and offered him the memories of three bright jewels that had driven better folk than he insane. The Orcs woke with a madness on them, and the shimmering coat of mail that Frodo wore inflamed it to an insatiable lust. One after another, they lifted their blades against one another; Mairon stood in the midst of wrack and ruin and smiled, and his smile was very terrible. So it was that when Sam passed by the Watchers before the door and came into the place where Frodo was held captive, nearly every Orc who might have offered him violence was dead already.

Mairon kept watch as best he could as Sam found Frodo half-swooning in the prison and gave him back the Ring to bear, as he went out and came back with clothing for both of them and they took stock of food and water. They were both very weary but in a terrible hurry to start out. Yet Mairon thought that a short rest now might make the difference between victory and defeat. Perhaps Sam felt the same, for though Frodo was eager to make a start at once, he said, “Please, Mr. Frodo, let’s wait—just for a little while. There mayn’t be time for sleep, but you could rest a little, surely? It’s not very safe, but—”

“But it is safer than anywhere else we are likely to find between here and Mount Doom, I suppose,” Frodo said, sadly and wearily. “Very well, dear Sam. Not for long, but you are right that I would feel better for taking a little time.” And then he rested his curly head upon Sam’s sturdy shoulder and entwined their fingers. “Perhaps this is the last time we will have in the world together that is not running or fighting,” he said softly. “Oh, Sam, how very dark it was when you were not here beside me.”

“I thought I’d failed you, Mr. Frodo,” Sam gulped, obviously very much affected. “I was determined to see the quest through, for your sake, but…” He trailed off. “I thought I’d failed you.”

“Sam. Never.” Frodo brought Sam’s fingers to his lips and kissed them gently. “You have never failed me, and you never will.”  
“Glad to hear you say so, though I don’t have your confidence in me.”

“If we are to rest and not to sleep,” Frodo said softly, “let me touch you as I once did—it seems so long ago, now!—in the Shire.”

Sam mumbled something that not even Mairon could catch, but Frodo reached up and put his arms about Sam’s neck and kissed him, this time on the lips, and Sam made a soft, breathy noise and pulled him close, his hands starting to move beneath Frodo’s poor excuse for a set of clothing. Mairon slipped away a little, to give them some privacy, to find some comfort in one another. He found, too late to fight it, that the situation had pulled the past to his mind and he slipped away into it for a little while.

_Mairon is in agony. His throat is bruised, and one foot so sore he can barely limp along. He should hide himself away and lick his wounds until they are better healed, but something draws him inexorably back to Angband. He has failed and will be punished, and he knows that he will deserve it._

_Slinking silent into the fortress, he finds the halls only half-guarded, and a shiver runs down his spine. He draws his ragged cloak about him and moves deeper. Reaching the throne room, his very blood chills in his veins, for there stands Melkor, his great form stooped over the Iron Crown, which has a ragged gap like a missing tooth along it beside the remaining two Silmarils. It has happened then—he has failed so badly that Melkor has lost one of the Silmarils. Mairon cannot stop the soft wail that falls from his throat, and he goes to his knees. It is not fear of death he feels now—for Melkor will kill him for this, he has no doubt—but he is weighted down by his own abject failure, the humiliation of being defeated by an elf maiden and her faithful hound._

_“I am sorry, Master; I have failed you,” he whispers, and he casts himself to his face._

_For a long time, there is a shattering gulf of silence, and then he feels Melkor’s hand upon his shoulder. “You are hurt, Little Flame,” Melkor says, in a low voice laden with concern, so different from how he has sounded for an age past that Mairon’s head whips up in consternation._

_“It is of no consequence,” he replies sadly. “Master—your jewels. Your most prized possessions.”_

_Melkor passes a hand across his forehead, and it is as if a storm has cleared from his eyes. “But not my most precious,” he says slowly. “The Silmarils will keep. The enemy has used all their strength and still they could take only one of three, still I possess the majority. I have walked through fear and on the other side, I find something different.”_

_Mairon is too weary to ask, even were he so inclined, what Melkor has found. He himself has passed through flame and anguish again and again, and he knows he has failed his master grievously. Yet his master’s eyes are a strange, clear blue he has not seen in a long, long time, and Melkor stoops and lifts him in his arms. “Come, Little Flame, thou art weary,” he says, but he sounds familiar and not dismissive. Mairon trembles in his arms, afraid still of what punishment is to be meted out to him. “Why dost thou tremble so?” Melkor asks, and Mairon cannot answer. “Did she hurt thee so badly?”_

_He carries Mairon from the throne room, with nary a glance back towards the Iron Crown, all the way to his own chambers, deep in the heart of Angband. He strips off the ugly rags that are all that remain of Mairon’s once very fine robes, making concerned noises over Mairon’s many injuries. At some point, Mairon stops worrying. He knows this peace, this happiness, cannot last, but for now, at least, he sees that Melkor is sincere. For these brief hours, it is Mairon who is once again his jewel, his Precious, and Mairon cannot and will not gainsay this._

_Melkor’s large hands touch him gently, so gently. He puts him into the stone tub Mairon designed for them—long ago, so long ago—and fills it with hot water and something sweetly scented. Mairon whimpers; he is so far away from human speech, still half a wolf in his head. Melkor bathes his injuries—cleaning out the deep gashes is painful, but it is a controlled pain. Mairon lets his head slip back, barely moving. That kind of pain at Melkor’s hands is good, and he realizes vaguely that he’s hard, though he isn’t sure if he wants to do anything about it._

_His long hair is matted with blood and dirt, and Melkor washes that out, too, scratching his fingers across Mairon’s scalp, and Mairon is moaning now. “What dost thou desire, Little Flame?”_

_“Take me,” Mairon whispers, clinging to him. “Let me have you this night. Please, master.”_

_There is true concern in Melkor’s eyes. “Shouldst thou not rest?”_

_“I don’t care. Please.” He may never have this again, not like this, not with Melkor looking at him and truly seeing him._

_“Very well.” He lifts Mairon out of the water and dries him off, then carries him into the bedroom and settles him comfortably on the bed. Mairon puts his arms around Melkor’s neck and kisses him, desperate, crying a little. Melkor holds him and kisses him in turn. It has been long, long years since he took the time to work Mairon’s cock and spread him open slowly with his fingers, and Mairon whines and pants and begs wantonly._

_Melkor takes him into his lap and penetrates him so slowly Mairon can barely feel it until he is fully inside and then there is the pleasure of being filled and the pleasure of Melkor’s cock stroking against the spot inside him that makes him seize up and cry out. The pain of broken ribs becomes a pleasure-pain like this, and Mairon kisses him and kisses him and cannot stop, for Melkor is kissing him back and whispering sweet things into his ear._

_When they lie down together to sleep, Melkor throws a possessive arm across him, and Mairon knows that the madness of the Silmarils will swallow them both again tomorrow, but for these few precious moments, he has this. For these few precious moments, he is absolved. For these few precious moments, he is loved._


	27. Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which all things come to an end.

As they went deeper and deeper into Mordor, and sleep became further and further between, it seemed to Sam that he was always half into Mairon’s strange dream realm. He could see him much of the time, walking just behind them, or just beside. He offered his arm to Sam every now and again, but he never seemed to offer Frodo aid anymore. His hair was losing its fiery hue again, but instead of washing out, as it had done at Minas Morgul, it was darkening into a deep blood red. His eyes still flickered with flame. 

It was strange how he flickered in and out of Sam’s perception and memory, but Sam was too weary to spend much thought on it or question it, especially when any such thought might be interrupted by Mairon’s abrupt disappearance. He was grateful for the wizard’s support when he thought of it, and none of them spoke much anymore, in any case.

When they were overtaken by Orcs, Sam thought that Mairon must vanish, and he did, but not for long. He was soon striding beside them again, in a dark cloak and stained travelers’ garments; oddly, his feet did not quite touch the road and he often seemed to be walking half-inside another of the Orcs.

_How shall we ever get away?_ Sam thought to himself. There was a little Orc walking beside them, half asleep on its feet as well. It trembled and snuffled in a way Sam did not much like, but it did not give Mr. Frodo trouble, which was the main thing. As they came to the cross-roads, it focused frightened red eyes upon Mairon.

“Can you not help them?” Mairon asked, and he sounded strangely gentle. Sam thought there was not much point in being gentle with an Orc, but he was too wearied himself to bother with any objection.

The Orc blinked stupidly at Mairon. “In the name of Naicelea,” Mairon said. “I ask you once again: can you not help them?” Sam thought he had heard that name once, in a tale someone had told him, but he could not remember it; his head was too muddled and overcrowded with worries. The Orc barely seemed to understand Mairon’s words, and Sam half wanted to tell him to drop it, but just then they met up with another army traveling along the road. The little Orc squealed as if someone had hurt it and threw a punch at its neighbor. In a moment, there was a little knot of tussling Orcs just by them, and Mairon took Sam’s hand and Frodo’s and pulled them off the road.

“Did that Orc just help us?” Sam said stupidly. “Why would it do that?”

“He wasn’t even full-grown,” Mairon said. “Just a boy. But he cared for the Orcs’ oath in a way that many older than he have forgotten.”

A boy. Like young Master Pippin, taken off to war before he was even full-grown. Sam hadn’t thought much about Orcs having families. He’d thought they must just pop into being fully grown from the muck or something.

A few days’ march was enough to bring them within sight of Mount Doom, but Frodo was very weary, and it concerned Sam greatly to discover he could no longer seem to hold images in his mind of happier times. As Mairon—a flickering shadow, now, almost—faded into Sam’s line of sight, he said. “Here, now, Mr. Mairon, can’t you help him? You’re a wizard, aren’t you?”

Mairon’s face turned toward him, and even Sam thought there was something strange about his form, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. “This is beyond my power to heal, Sam,” he said softly. “And I am fighting my own battle in this land. I cannot even shield my true form from him any longer.”

“Your…your true form?” Sam asked haltingly, for something dark and frightening seemed to hang about the gay companion he had known nearly all his life. Mairon drew himself up, and now Sam saw that he once again wore dark armor, glinting crimson in the dim red light of Mordor, and his hair was nearly black.

“Have you not guessed it yet, faithful Samwise? I am he whose grief and bitterness poisoned this land long ago.”

“No,” said Sam, bluntly, in dull horror.

“My master’s madness was from the Silmarils; mine was not,” Mairon said, softly, his voice crooning. “My madness was my faith in him and my desperation for his love, and for it, I forged myself anew into a creature of cruelty and hate, who only wanted to make what my heart desired and be worthy of praise for it.” He shuddered and threw back his head and then laughed. “It is having as much effect on me as it is on Frodo, Sam. I cannot recall what this land was like before, and I can feel Him, more and more, as we grow closer, the Shadow self that subjugated me wholly in Numenor.”

“No, no!” Sam cried. 

“Yes,” Mairon said coldly. “I am Sauron, the Defiler, and as I walk this road to my last doom, I must fight every moment, lest I cry out to Him to take me back.”

Sam fought for words, for a moment. All of this—Mairon’s doing? Then the wheel of fire that Frodo spoke of? He could see it, if he tried hard, flickering in a strange way _beyond_ the Mairon who stood beside him. “Well, sir,” he said at last, “All I know is you’ve helped us on this whole journey, and now I’m beginning to understand what Mr. Frodo and Mr. Gandalf were meaning about mercy in much of their talk and their tales.”

“And you’re far too tired to attack me now, and you know it wouldn’t be worth wasting your strength on.”

“Well, yes, sir, that, too,” Sam agreed. “But you’ve always treated me fair and well, and you’ve always done your best for Mr. Frodo, since I’ve known you.” A flicker of surprise lit in Mairon’s eyes. “Well, I can’t go turning a friend into an enemy in my head just like that, can I?”

Mairon went to one knee, bowing his head. “Then neither can I, Sam.” His hair lightened a little, and he seemed to make a great effort; the dark mail vanished and was replaced with the old white tunic that always made Sam feel queer because it made him think of the Barrow-downs, but it was better, all the same.

“I wish there was more I could do,” Mairon said softly. “But I am bound by my own doing and must continue this fight in my own way.”

~

His conversation with Sam cleared Mairon’s head a little, though still that other Self pulsed and pulled and whispered. It did not know he was there, thankfully, or he did not know if he would have been able to resist it. If the grief and bitterness of former days had grown in his breast and whispered of destruction and vengeance again with the express purpose of drawing him back into it, he might not have denied it. As it was, it was still enough of a fight. And it was hard, truly hard, to fight _for_ something he had fought _against_ for so many, many ages. Still, he counted himself luckier than Frodo.

As they ascended Mount Doom, they were coming closer and closer to the Sammath Naur, and there were many beautiful memories for him there, foul and despoiled as it had become now. But he cast his mind back to before he had ever forged the Iron Crown and thought instead of making trinkets for Melkor. Further back, even, and it was not this forge he remembered, but he could dimly see Olórin’s gentle smile framed by Nienna’s rain.

Lost in his thoughts, he almost did not realize it when Frodo crossed the threshold of the Cracks of Doom and stood almost at the edge, with the fierce heat of the forge burning at his face. They had made it. Mairon’s heart constricted with fear, but he thrust it down. This was the last atonement he could make, and he would. He would make it. 

“Frodo,” he said. “Cast the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom. Quickly, please,” for he did not like the idea of a slow death.

There was an ominous pause. “I have come,” Frodo said in a clear voice that to Mairon’s ears was nonetheless laden with the final madness of Melkor, “but I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!”

He put the Ring on. Mairon cried out, feeling an iron will against his. He could not command Frodo any more than he could have commanded Melkor, and Frodo laughed with that selfsame clear tone. “Fëacormo, spirit of the Ring, do as I bid or I will hurt thee!”

“There is nothing that you can do to me anymore,” Mairon told him, and he did not even bother to scream at the pain he was immediately subjected to. Instead—

There was only one who could save him now, and it was with bitter irony that he realized it. “ _Sméagol!_ ” he cried, and he did not disguise the anguish in his voice. “Your Precious needs you!”

And Sméagol came, screaming, towards them. He pounced upon Frodo and his sharp teeth snapped home about the hobbit’s hand, drawing back with a cry of triumph. Mairon stood on the lip of Doom, and then he reached out with the last of his power as a spirit of flame and earth and shifted the stones beneath Sméagol’s feet. Frodo stared up at him; behind him, Sam burst into the chamber and caught his master before he could fall. “I am sorry,” Mairon told them. “Farewell.”

And he fell into flame.

~

The end of Frodo and Sam’s tale is told in other places, so I shall not dwell on it here, but there is yet a little more to go of the tale of Mairon and the Ring. When all celebrations were ended and the hobbits took the homeward road and came to Rivendell, Bilbo was waiting for them, grown old and absentminded, but still the same dear old Bilbo who had wished them well and sent them off.

Frodo caught him three times counting on his fingers as they ate their meals together with a puzzled expression. “What is the matter, Uncle Bilbo?” he asked. “You look as though you had lost something.” Then he could have kicked himself, for he was afraid that he had just made Bilbo think of the Ring, which still burned very badly in his own mind at times.

Bilbo did not seem to be in pain, however. “It’s only an old man’s memory going, lad,” he said, patting Frodo’s hand. “I thought there was another who left with you and has not come back. But I can’t imagine who it would be.” He shook his head. “Pay me no mind.”

Frodo looked inquiringly at Gandalf, still a little concerned that the Ring might be preying upon Bilbo’s mind, but his wits did not seem clouded.

“Can you tell us anything about this mysterious other person?” Gandalf asked. Frodo could not quite read the look in his eyes.

“It’s odd,” Bilbo mumbled, half to himself. “I feel as if I had lost a very—” he groped for the word, “—a very admirable friend.”

Gandalf gave a quick intake of breath and looked at him strangely from under his beetling brows. “What did you say?” But Bilbo just blinked at him and shook his head, and Gandalf settled back down. “Never mind. Just a passing thought.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is an epilogue, please stay tuned


	28. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon awakens.

Mairon stands beneath an arched blue sky, with only the memory of long darkness behind him. He is small beneath the green, rolling hills and the vast woodlands; small beneath the soaring mountain whose curves he recognizes as if in a dream. Bright flowers cover the side of Amon Amarth, of Mount Doom; somehow, he knows they were nurtured from the ash.

A gentle hand touches his shoulder, and he whirls to see the thing he has so longed to see, has burned to see, has dashed himself again and again upon the rocks of Arda to see: Melkor, a handspan taller than Mairon as always, mantling one hand through Mairon’s curtain of long red hair. “My lord—” Mairon begins, and his throat seizes up. Before he can continue, Melkor casts himself to his knees in front of Mairon, bowing his head. He is unclad; they are both unclad. Melkor’s hand is burned black as it has been since he took hold of those cursed Silmarils. This is not a vision; this is a new truth.

“What—” says Mairon.

“I have broken the Door of Night and returned to Middle Earth,” Melkor tells him. “As it was foretold, I am to bring about Dagor Dagorath, the final battle, and the end times.”

“And what am I doing here?” Mairon asks, caught between his desperate love and the desire to turn away to try and stop the pain. He thought that he would wake in the Halls of Mandos, if he woke at all, not here, in this quiet place. He thought he would never see Melkor’s face again. He thought he had made his peace with that.

“I found your spirit sleeping at the base of the mountain.” Melkor nods towards the quiescent volcano. “I restored your form and awakened you.”

“Why?” Mairon asks, feeling a great weariness falling upon his shoulders again. He shuts his eyes. “I cannot be your lieutenant anymore, Melkor,” he says sadly. “I cannot destroy this place; I have given everything to protect it.”

“I do not ask it of you,” Melkor tells him gently; his eyes are sad. Mairon searches them, but there is no hint of the gleaming madness of the Silmarils in those blue orbs. “I brought you here to apologize to you. I have wronged you greatly, Little Flame.”

Mairon is trembling. “The final battle?” he says, uncertainly. A knot twists inside him as he realizes he cannot fight for Melkor but neither can he fight for the Valar, and he is so very lost.

“I give it up.” Melkor raises a hand as if scattering dust to the wind. “I am tired of destruction; long years in the Void reflecting on all that came before have taught me that.”

“Then…then why did you return? Why did you break the Door of Night, if not for your vengeance?”

“I was a _maker_ once,” Melkor says. “I forgot that, to my doom and yours. I made nothing once I had the Silmarils in hand, and I destroyed much. Now there is only one thing left I desire to make.”

“And what is that?” Mairon asks.

“Amends.” Melkor bows his head, and Mairon chokes and steps towards him. It is only then that he realizes that behind him in a semi-circle stand many tall fair forms. He recognizes Aulë’s bright beard as if in a dream, and, trembling, he draws nearer to Melkor. The Valar are murmuring amongst themselves. Beyond them stand hosts upon hosts of Maiar.

“When will the battle begin?” whispers one Maia that Mairon no longer recognizes. Melkor gets to his feet and puts himself between Mairon and the glittering host.

“I will not fight,” he says. “You have all heard my words—they stand as an oath.”

“I have heard thy oaths before.” Manwë. Mairon grinds his teeth as the old familiar anger flames in him, but he makes no move either, for he may have taken no oath by his voice but he took one by his actions when he gave himself to the flames, for Bilbo, for Frodo, for Sam. “Thou hast broken the Door of Night and that means that the final battle is now upon us. Do not try to use thy silver tongue to avert thy craven end for a few short hours.”

“It will be a very short battle indeed, if Melkor and Mairon will not fight in it,” says another voice, sounding amused and one of the figures behind Manwë now steps into the ring of Ainur. He has changed but little since the last time Mairon saw him, although he wears white now, not grey. Yet still his face is lined and ancient; still he bears a crooked staff.

“Olórin!” Mairon cries joyfully and steps forward to greet him as one might greet an old friend.

“Am I right in thinking,” Olórin says, giving Mairon one of those terrible searching looks that Mairon has often seen him use on Bilbo or Frodo, “that you accompanied my Ring-bearer to the very end of his quest?”

“You are,” Mairon says.

“Quest?” Melkor says. “Is that how you ended as a slumbering spirit beneath a mountaintop?”

“I have made as many mistakes as my master,” Mairon says, bowing his head. “I will not apologize for the first rebellion, but for what I made the Elves and Men and _Hobbits_ suffer, I will. And in the end I did my best to take responsibility for my actions. For my choices. Both good and ill.”

“You did,” Olórin agrees warmly. He opens his arms, and Mairon embraces him, then steps back slowly.

But Manwë stands firm. “There is no standing aside from destiny,” he says solemnly. “This is the end of days.”

Olórin turns. “Great Manwë, would you strike down two unarmed men?” he asks quietly, and there is, to Mairon’s astonishment, _rebuke_ in his tone. Rebuke from a Maia to a Vala. 

“My love.” A Vala arrayed in glittering raiment stands forth. In her hair gleam jewels that Mairon looks away from to see Melkor still watching him with an aching longing on his face. “I never thought there would come a time when Sauron the Abhorred would call for Varda’s aid, but it happened. If the man has chosen his own path, why not the master?”

A murmur runs through the crowd of Ainur. “I was _made_ to slay Melkor!” That is definitely Tulkas’ voice.

It was not until the age of the Silmarils that Mairon lost his ability to talk back to a Vala. He finds now that he has regained it. “Then perhaps, great Lord, you had better find a new hobby!” he calls out.

“A harsher judge than you might say the punishments have already been meted out and fulfilled,” puts in Mandos’ quiet voice. “Mairon lived in tormented imprisonment for countless years and in the end still forswore his vengeance. And Melkor seems to have done the same.”

A misty figure in grey nods. Nienna. “Olórin’s words are wise, great Manwë. Surely you do not wish Middle Earth to be destroyed?”

Manwë’s confusion is evident, buffeted as he is on many sides. “This is the end of the Song,” he says, but he does not sound so confident. “We have all seen it.”

“Not even among the wise did anyone see the strength that lay in one Hobbit’s heart,” Olórin says. “Nor the repentance that lay in Mairon’s. The two others on that dread quest returned and were rewarded. He died and passed through fire. As did I.”

“And was not Melkor borne from the same music that we all were?” A merry voice. She stands hand in hand with her husband, and she has not changed, though she wears a crown of autumn leaves in her wet hair. Mairon runs to embrace Goldberry as well; however she has come to be here, he is grateful for her presence.

“I made a choice in the beginning to fight for my freedom,” Melkor says, “With that hard-won freedom, I choose now not to go to battle anymore.” He makes a face. “If I have to, I’ll even apologize to Fëanor,” he mutters, though his face looks as though he has swallowed a lemon. 

“Ilúvatar’s will is clouded,” Manwë says slowly. “But it seems I must listen to the clamor of those about me. It would not do for a king to ignore his councilors’ advice. And I must confess that I, too, wish to see Middle Earth continue to flourish. But this is a strange day, indeed.”

Mairon turns back to Melkor. “If this is your course, my lord, I can renew my oaths to you,” he says, casting himself to one knee before his master.

“I rewarded your service once before with naught but pain and despair,” Melkor told him. “I was no kind of master. No, I will not take your service—” As Mairon opened his mouth to object, “—not yet, Mairon. Not until I have redeemed myself in mine _own_ eyes for what I have done to you.”

“Then I will argue with you even more, my lo—Melkor.”

Melkor grins at him. “I doubt that,” he says. “I doubt that it is possible, for thou wast ever the most argumentative lieutenant I have ever heard of. Though thou wast often right.”

“Often!” Mairon explodes. “ _Always_.”

Melkor takes his hand. “I believe I have been right a time or two.”

Mairon is trying to think how to respond when Manwë speaks again. “As it seems there is to be no battle after all, we must take our leave, for we have tarried overlong in Middle Earth,” he says. “Melkor and Mairon, will you come with us to Valinor or remain here for a while?”

Melkor shakes his head. “I do not know,” he says pensively. “Mairon?”

“Let us remain here,” Mairon says firmly. “There is a place that I would fain return to. I am sure it is much changed but perhaps the flowers still stand in rows and the folk there keep loving wolves beside them. It was precious to me long ago, and I would share it with thee, Melkor.”

Laughing, Melkor runs a hand across his face. “Flowers—but in _rows_ ,” he says, his voice gently mocking. “Thou hast changed but not so much as thou might have, Little Flame. And I would see these loving wolves.”

One by one, the Ainur take their leave. Olórin is the last, and he takes Mairon’s hand. “There will ever be a place for you in the forges of Valinor, I think,” he says. “Aulë has not forgiven, perhaps, but there is much to occupy his mind, and I believe he would allow it. And you would be a mighty ally against it whenever new evil should arise—and it will, someday.”

“I will not forget your offer,” Mairon promises. “And I would like to talk to you as a friend and not just a listening ear.”

Olórin pats his hand. “There is one in Valinor, I believe, who still looks for you, and he is most stubborn. Do not take too long to return or Master Baggins will threaten to scold me to death unless I should chase you down.”

Mairon smiles delightedly. “You have my word,” he replies. “My dearest friend shall not wait for me that much longer.”

Then he, too, is gone, and Mairon is left alone with Melkor. A span of years lies heavy between them, but there is but one step to take, one at a time. Mairon reaches for Melkor’s hand, and Melkor takes it. “Lead me to this fair land of thine,” he murmurs.

It is a long journey but a pleasant one, through rolling hills and a meadow full of flowers that would delight Samwise Gamgee if he ever saw it. Gorgoroth has become more beautiful than Mairon could ever have believed of this wild southern land. Mairon and Melkor are able, in this quiet place, to learn each other again and to earn each other’s trust. As but two travelers, they wind their way slowly through the bounteous lands and come, at long last, to a pretty road winding through a set of pretty hills.

It is much changed, indeed: there is wheat, in high rows, along both sides, and there are far more buildings than Mairon recalls, but they are comfortable-looking farms and towns, and he did not expect that much would be the same. Weary enough, they make their way to a low, inviting white building that seems to be an inn and are met with a series of frantic, excited barks.

Mairon laughs with joy as three large wolves come running out to greet them, and he goes to the dust to cuddle and have his face kissed. Melkor stands back a little, but he places a hand on Mairon’s shoulder.

“Oh—oh _no_! Petunia! Rose! Elanor! Stop that!” A young girl comes rushing out. “Oh, I am so sorry! They are just dreadful, those three!” She is not very pretty—short and stout, with an upturned nose and a heavy brow, but she seems kind and very concerned. 

Two more folk follow her out the door. “Regash, what _have_ your pets done now?” sighs the large woman behind her, and Mairon looks up in astonishment to see that she is an Orc and beside her stands a fat hobbit, his hands on his waistcoat. 

“No, no,” Mairon says. “They have but given us a hardy welcome—there is no cause for concern.”

“Well, let us give you a good meal all the same,” says the hobbit. “I can’t in all conscience drive weary travelers off my doorstep. My mother would turn in her grave. Come in, come in.”

Melkor’s hand on Mairon’s back reassures him, and Mairon gets to his feet. “We must be close to the borders of the Shire?” he asks. “I have been gone for some time.”

“Why, you’ve passed the border these three miles back,” the Orc woman says companionably. 

“Only—” Mairon stops, wondering if he is about to be terribly rude, but his heart is swelling inside him. “Only I have never seen any of Naicelea’s people in the Shire.”

“You must have been gone for a long time indeed then,” laughs the hobbit. “Had you the lifespans of mythical Elves you ought to have seen an Orc or two round about these parts! My wife is the bravest of them all, of course!”

“Oh, you—”

Mairon has halted in the hallway, for he can’t help himself. His heart has swelled so much that he finds himself suddenly in tears, and Melkor’s comfortable arms pull him close.

“Little Flame?” he says, sounding concerned.

“No, no,” Mairon sobs. “It is only—that I am so happy.”

“Shhhh,” Melkor murmurs, stroking his hair back from his forehead, and the hobbit innkeeper makes concerned clucking noises and leads them into a large front parlor filled mostly with hobbits but a few Orcs and Men as well. “It has been a long road for both of us, but especially for my love,” he says softly, and he kisses Mairon’s forehead and gets him to sit down.

And Mairon leans against him and wonders how he ever hated the world so much that he nearly destroyed it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha there's another epilogue after the epilogue but it fits better as a separate fic in the series so keep an eye out of that ;)
> 
> thanks for reading, everyone -- this fic has been a blast and your comments & kudos have been absolutely the best thing <3


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